Article ID: 222470
Article Last Modified on 2/23/2007
APPLIES TO
- Microsoft Windows 2000 Server
- Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server
- Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional Edition
- Microsoft Windows 2000 Datacenter Server
This article was previously published under Q222470
SUMMARY
Windows 2000 contains a fault-tolerant disk component named dynamic disks that is different then the fault-tolerant disk component in earlier versions of Microsoft Windows NT. You may administer dynamic disks by using the Disk Management snap-in. The DmDiag.exe tool can be used to decipher disk numbering, and this may be useful for situations where your disk numbering is very complex.
MORE INFORMATION
There are now two disk types, basic and dynamic. A dynamic disk is the only type of disk you may use to create new mirrors, stripe sets, extended or spanned or RAID-5 volumes.
With dynamic disks, all volume information is stored in a private database at the end of the disk. Disks are numbered as they are upgraded from basic to dynamic, so they can be numbered differently from the numbering in the Disk Management snap-in.
For example, in Disk Management you may see the following numbering information:
| Disk Management |
|---|
| Disk 0 |
| Disk 1 |
| Disk 2 |
| Disk 3 |
If you were to upgrade only disk 2 and disk 3 to dynamic (in that order), then the dynamic disk database would display the following numbering:
| Windows 2000 Disk # | Dynamic Disk Private # |
|---|---|
| Harddisk2 | Disk1 |
| Harddisk3 | Disk2 |
When you use the DmDiag Query command, you receive the following output:
NOTE: Make note of the lines that start with dm DiskX; these denote which dynamic disk private numbers match the numbers in the Windows 2000 Disk Management snap-in.
Disk group: MachineNameDg0
DG NAME NCONFIG NLOG MINORS GROUP-ID
DM NAME DEVICE TYPE PRIVLEN PUBLEN STATE
V NAME USETYPE KSTATE STATE LENGTH READPOL PREFPLEX
PL NAME VOLUME KSTATE STATE LENGTH LAYOUT NCOL/WID MODE
SD NAME PLEX DISK DISKOFFS LENGTH [COL/]OFF DEVICE MODE
dg MachineNameDg0 all default 0 14ad79a0-b48c-11d2-b461-00c04f8eec37
dm Disk1 Harddisk2 ntdisk 2048 17767827 -
dm Disk2 Harddisk3 ntdisk 2048 17767826 -
v Volume1 gen ENABLED ACTIVE 8388608 SELECT -
pl Volume1-01 Volume1 ENABLED ACTIVE 8388608 CONCAT - RW
sd Disk1-01 Volume1-01 Disk1 0 8388608 0 Harddisk2 ENA
v Volume2 gen ENABLED ACTIVE 4194304 SELECT -
pl Volume2-01 Volume2 ENABLED ACTIVE 4194304 CONCAT - RW
sd Disk1-02 Volume2-01 Disk1 8388608 4194304 0 Harddisk2 ENA
v Volume3 gen ENABLED ACTIVE 4194304 SELECT -
pl Volume3-01 Volume3 ENABLED ACTIVE 4194304 CONCAT - RW
sd Disk2-01 Volume3-01 Disk2 0 4194304 0 Harddisk3 ENA
v Volume4 gen ENABLED ACTIVE 4194304 SELECT -
pl Volume4-01 Volume4 ENABLED ACTIVE 4194304 CONCAT - RW
sd Disk2-02 Volume4-01 Disk2 4194304 4194304 0 Harddisk3 ENA
For additional information about dynamic and basic storage, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
175761 Dynamic vs. Basic Storage in Windows 2000
Additional query words: veritas ldm dmtool dmdiag
Keywords: kbinfo KB222470
