Disk Management Tools

. Manage disks

Cram Saver

1. What two commands or utilities are used to manage your disk volumes? (Choose two answers.)

❍ A. Diskpart ❍ B. Scandisk ❍ C. Disk Management console ❍ D. Shared Folders console

2. You installed Windows 7 on a new computer. You want to expand your C drive to a second hard drive. How should the disk be configured?

❍ A. The disk needs to be a basic disk. ❍ B. The disk needs to be a dynamic disk. ❍ C. The disk needs to use MBR. ❍ D. The disk needs to use GPT.

Answers

1. A and C are correct. The two main programs or utilities to manage your disks are the Diskpart command and the Disk Management console. The Disk Management console can be found as part of the Computer Management console. Answer B is incorrect because Scandisk is a pro- gram found on older versions of Windows to check for errors. Answer D is incorrect because the Shared folders console, which is also part of the Computer Management console, is used to configure your shared folders.

2. B is correct. Dynamic disks do not have the same limitations of basic disks (Answer A). For example, you can extend a dynamic disk “on-the- fly” without requiring a reboot. In addition, dynamic disks can contain a virtually unlimited number of volumes, so you are not restricted to four volumes per disk as you are with basic disks. MBR (Answer C) and GPT (Answer D) are partitioning styles and have no bearing on the expanding or shrinking of a volume.

There are two main tools to manage your disks. The most common tool is the Disk Management console, which is part of the Computer Management console, as shown in Figure 4.1. With Disk Management, you can initialize disks, create volumes, and format volumes with the FAT, FAT32, or NTFS file systems.

Disk Management Tools

Disk Management enables you to perform most disk-related tasks without restarting the system or interrupting users. Most configuration changes take effect immediately.

FIGURE 4.1 Disk Management console.

The other tool to manage your disks is Diskpart, which is a command-line hard disk partitioning utility included with Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. It replaces fdisk , which was used in MS-DOS–based operating systems. You can use Diskpart to convert a basic disk to a dynamic disk. Diskpart is includ-

ed as part of the Windows 7 operating system, and it can also be found as part of WinPE. Different from most commands executed at the command prompt, the diskpart command starts a command-based environment specifically used to manage your disks. It can also be used with scripts to automate its usage.

Before performing a specific operation using diskpart, you need to first change

the focus or select the specific disk, partition, or volume using the select

command. All commands except for list , help , rem , exit , or help require focus. To use the select command, you would do one of the following:

. select : To obtain a list of focus types, execute the select command with no parameters.

. select disk[=n] : Use the select disk command to set the focus to the disk that has the specified Windows disk number. If you do not specify a disk number, the command displays the current in-focus disk.

CHAPTER 4: Disk Management

. select partition[=n/l] : Use the select partition command to set the focus to the specified partition. If you do not specify a partition, the current in-focus partition is displayed. On basic disks, you can specify the partition by either index, drive letter, or mount point. You can only specify the partition by index on dynamic disks.

. select volume[=n/l] : Use the select volume command to set the focus to the specified volume. If you do not specify a volume, the command displays the current in-focus volume. You can specify the volume by either index, drive letter, or mount point path. On a basic disk, if you select a volume, the corresponding partition is put in focus.

Use the list command to display a summary. To display more information,

set the focus, and then use the detail command. Use the detail disk

command to obtain the detailed information about the current in-focus disk. Of course, with each of these, you use either disk, partition, or volume (see Figure 4.2). After you have selected your drive, partition, or volume, you then use create partition, delete partition, create volume, or delete volume. Lastly, you use the exit command to exit diskpart.

FIGURE 4.2 Using Diskpart to select and list a volume.

Disk Management Tools

For more information about the diskpart utility, visit the following website: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300415

Disk Management Tools