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After the various operating systems are connected to the storage system, and after the operating system recognizes the physical disk, the disk needs to be further configured. If the user connects to the Windows Server of the storage, it is necessary for the storage administrator to understand the disk types and file systems in Windows. The author summarizes the characteristics of Windows disk and partition types from the point of view of storage, and introduces and analyzes their contents to help administrators better understand the storage and file system connected by Windows hosts.

Disk type of Windows:

There are two types of physical disks for Windows:

Basic Disk (basic disk)-this type of physical disk can be accessed by MS-DOS and all Windows operating systems. A Basic Disk can include up to four primary partitions (Primary Partition), or a logical disk (Logical Disk) of three primary partitions and one extended partition (Extended Partition). Basic does not support fault tolerance, so you can create disks in MBR and GPT.

Dynamic Disk (dynamic disk)-Dynamic Disk provides features that Basic Disk does not have, such as extending one logical volume to multiple physical disks. Dynamic Disk uses hidden databases to maintain dynamic volumes on bit physical disks. If you need to extend one logical disk to multiple physical disks, you need to use Windows Disk Management and Diskpart.ext tools to convert Basic disk to Dynamic Disk first. Dynamic Disk supports online creation (requires reboot) and online extension of logical volumes. Multiple copies of metadata are stored on disk. Simplify management by using soft Raid functions, Mirror, Spanned, and so on.

Partition type of Windows disk:

When it comes to disk structure, it's important to understand the following two concepts: MBR and GPT.

The first sector (Sector) on the MBR (Master Boot Record) physical disk, also known as the main boot sector, is the first sector that must be read when the computer accesses the disk. It is located in cylinder 0, head 0, and sector 1. The MBR disk of Windows is divided into multiple contiguous areas called Partition. The information of each partition is stored in MBR, the first sector of the disk. The starting position and length of the partition are defined in MBR. Only one primary partition can be activated and operating system startup is supported.

GPT (GUID Partition Table) is a disk partitioning architecture used by the Extensible firmware Interface (EFI) in Itanium-based computers. GPT has more advantages over the Master Boot record (MBR) partitioning method because it allows up to 128partitions per disk, theoretically supports a maximum size of 18 EB volumes, allows primary and backup disk partition tables to be used for redundancy, and supports unique disks and partitions ID (GUID). GPT is the choice of using high-capacity disks in windows.

The following table shows the Windows operating system information for MBR and GPT:

MBRGPTWindows operating system version MS-DOS and all Windows versions

Windows 2003 and above hardware support 32-bit CPU64-bit CPU support up to a single logical volume 2TB256TB partition table copy number of one Primary and Backup partition table, support checksum maximum number of partitions 4 primary partitions or 3 primary partitions and 1 extended partition 128partition data storage locations are stored in partitions, critical Platform data is stored in partitions hidden from users

The following table shows the Volume types (MBR disk types) supported by Basic and Dynamic Disk:

BasicDynamicVolume type support support Simple Volume support support Spanned Volume support support Striped Volume (Raid-0) support support RAID-5 Volume support support Mirrored Volume (Raid-1)

The following table shows the Volume types (GPT disk types) supported by Basic and Dynamic Disk. You can see that the software Raid needs to be implemented in Windows and the disk type needs to be converted to Dynamic.

BasicDynamicVolume type support supports Simple Volume

Support for Spanned Volume

Support for Striped Volume (Raid-0)

Support for RAID-5 Volume

Support for Mirrored Volume (Raid-1)

Summary:

After Windows connects to storage, choose GPT partition type and Dynamic Disk trial Windows storage management flexibility all improved, GPT partition format put aside the capacity limit of MBR maximum 2TB, support online expansion, a variety of advantages. Dynamic disks are not limited by the number of partitions. The way to enable GPT and Dynamic Disk is simple.

In Windows Server 2008/2008R2, Server Manager-Storage-Disk Management-right-click the disk to be converted

In Windows Server 2003 Disk Management 2003 R2, Computer Management-Disk Management-right-click the disk that needs to be converted.

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