In this video from ITFreeTraining, I will look at how to use the Windows Disk Management
tool. Using Disk Management, besides allowing basic disk management to be performed, also
allows multiple disks to be combined together. This video will look at the basic features
as well as the more advanced features of disk management. Without further ado, I will change
to my Windows Server 2012 R2 server and look at how to use Disk Management.
Disk management can be accessed a number of different ways. In this video I will access
it by right clicking the start menu and selecting run. From here I will enter in "DiskMGMT.MSC".
This will run the Disk Management tool in full screen. Running Disk Management in full
screen allows more screen real estate to be used to show the disks in the system.
Notice that disk 0 is currently displayed as a basic disk. Basic disks allow the least
amount of features but offer the most compatibility with older operating systems including alternative
operating systems.
A basic disk supports the ability to resize a volume, including the volume containing
the operating system. In this case the operating system is on this drive. To make a volume
smaller, right click the drive and select the option "Shrink Volume".
Once the Window appears, the maximum amount the drive can be shrunk will appear. In this
case I will accept this value and press the shrink button to start shrinking the drive.
Notice that Windows will attempt to shrink the drive. However, an error message will
appear informing us that there is not enough space available to complete the operation.
Even though there is enough free space, the free space is not at the end of the drive.
If this occurs, the drive needs to be defragmented so that all the free space is at the end of
the drive.
To defrag the drive, all that you need to do is right click on the drive, select the
properties and then select the tools tab. To defrag the drive, press the button "Optimize".
Defragging does take a long time to complete, in this case I will not defrag the drive.
Instead I will go back and attempt to shrink the volume again. However this time, I will
enter in the value to shrink the drive to 70000 Megabytes.
Once I press shrink, the drive will be shrunk down to a size of just over 30 Gigabytes.
Now that there is some free space at the end of drive, I will right click this free space
and select the option "New Simple Volume" to launch the wizard.
Once I am past the welcome screen, on the next screen, I need to enter in is how big
I would like to make the partition. In this case I will make it 10000 megabytes and move
on to the next screen.
Next, I get the option to decide how the drive should be accessed. The top option allows
me to select a drive letter. In this case, the drive letter has been automatically selected
as drive e. Under this, you also have the option to mount the newly create volume to
a folder. If you are not sure what you want to do yet, you can select the bottom option
- which will leave the drive unassigned until the administrator assigns it later on.
In this case I will accept the default option and move on. On the next screen, I need to
determine how the new volume will be formatted. In this case, I will change the volume label
to simple and accept the defaults and complete the wizard.
Once the volume has been created, notice that when I right click on the c drive, the option
"Extend Volume" has been grayed out. The volume can no longer be extended because there is
no free space after the volume. However, notice that after the volume that I just created,
there is free space available. If I right click on the e drive, notice the option "Extend
Volume" is available. If I select this, the extend volume wizard will start.
Once past the welcome screen, the maximum amount of space the volume can be extended
will automatically be entered. In this case, I will change this value of 10000 to expand
the volume by 10000 megabytes.
To access additional features, the disk need to be converted from basic to a dynamic disk.
For example, mirroring a drive requires the disk to be dynamic. If I right click the e
drive, notice that I have the option "Add Mirror". Once this option is selected, I will
be prompted to choose (from the available disks in the system) which one to have the
mirror created on.
Notice that when the disk is added, you will get a warning message indicating that the
disks will need to be upgraded to a dynamic disk in order to continue. Once I press yes,
both disks will be upgraded to dynamic disks automatically.
Once the mirror drive has been created, the contents between the disks will be synced
with each other to ensure both disks have the same information. A mirror volume requires
the same amount of space on the second drive as what was in use on the first drive.
As can be seen here, the rest of the free space on disk 1 has not been used. Even though
it was not used for the mirror volume, the free space can be used for other volumes.
Notice also the disk type has automatically been changed to dynamic. The synchronization
process does take a while to complete; so I will pause the video and return shortly.
When I created the mirror volume, the disk was automatically converted to a dynamic disk.
If I want to convert a basic disk to a dynamic disk manually, right click the disk and select
the option "Convert to Dynamic Disk".
Windows will then give you the option to decide which disks to convert. In this case, I will
only convert the second disk to a dynamic disk.
The disk is now a dynamic disk. However, notice that if I right click on the disk, I have
the option "Convert to Basic Disk". You will notice that if I right click on Disk 1 the
option "Convert to Basic Disk" is grayed out. You will only be able to convert a dynamic
disk to a basic disk if no volumes are present on the disk. Effectively this means that if
you want to convert a dynamic disk to a basic disk, all the data on the disk must first
be removed.
I will next look at a striped volume. A striped volume divides the data in the volume evenly
between the number of disks in the striped volume. This gives good read and write performance;
however, does not offer any redundancy, meaning if any drive in the striped volume was to
fail, all data in the striped volume would be lost.
To create a striped volume, all I need to do is right click a free disk and select the
option "New Striped Volume" to launch the wizard.
Once past the welcome screen, on the next screen, I need to add the disks that I want
to use. Notice that amount of space useable with one disk is about 200 Gigabytes. However,
when I add the second drive, the total amount of space remains at 200 Gigabytes.
Further down, notice the amount of space that will be used on the drive I just added is
100 Gigabytes. Striped drives require all disks to have the same amount of free space.
If you have disks with different amounts of space, Windows will automatically reduce the
amount of space used on each drive to the amount on the drive with the least amount
of free space.
For the rest of the wizard, I will accept the default and change the volume label to
Striped and perform a quick format. Once completed, Windows will inform me again that the disks
will need to be converted to dynamic disks, which is a one way process, and once I press
yes, the striped volume will be created.
Notice that the striped volume has been created. It has been created on two disks with free
space being left on the first disk. The free space was not able to be used due to the difference
in drive sizes. In this case, I have used 2 disks. However, you are free to use 2 or
more disks in a striped set. The important point to remember is that once you create
the striped volume, you will not be able to add or remove disks from the striped volume.
If I now scroll down, I will next create a Raid-5 drive by right clicking on an empty
drive and selecting the option "New RAID-5 Volume".
Once I am past the welcome screen, on the next screen, I need to select which disks
I want to use in the RAID-5 volume. If I add a second disk, notice that the next option
is grayed out. This is because RAID-5 volumes require at least 3 disks.
If I add a 100 Gigabyte disk, notice that once added, the amount of space that is useable
on the disk is 50 Gigabytes. Just like before with the striped volume, the amount of useable
space on the drive has been reduced to the same amount as the disk with the least amount
of free space.
Notice the maximum amount of space is 100 Gigabytes. Even though there are 3 drives
with 50 Gigabytes being used (totaling 150 Gigabytes), one of the drives is lost to parity.
This means RAID-5 can keep working after one drive has failed.
I will now complete the wizard accepting the defaults except for changing the volume label
to RAID-5 and making sure that 'quick format' is ticked. I will get a message (telling me
that the disks will be converted to dynamic disks) to which I will press yes when asked,
and the RAID-5 volume will be created.
Like the Striped Volume, notice that it needs to perform a re-synching, which will take
a while to complete; so, I will pause the video here and return shortly.
Now that the RAID-5 drive has been synced, notice that it appears in disk management
as a healthy g Drive. Even after a single disk failure, the volume will still appear
in Windows Explorer as G drive and be useable like any other drive.
After creating all these volumes, notice that there is a lot of free space that is still
present on multiple disks. In order to make use of this free space, I will right click
on some of it and select the option "New Spanned Volume".
Once I am past the welcome screen, on the next screen, I will select all available disks
and add them to the spanned set.
Like before, I will accept all the defaults in the wizard except changing the label name
to "Spanned", and making sure that the 'quick format' option is ticked. Like before, once
I complete the wizard, I will get a warning message that one of the drives will need to
be converted to a dynamic disk. Once again I will press yes, and the spanned volume will
be created.
You will notice that the spanned volume has been created. Each of the different volumes
is color coded, making it easier to see them. At the bottom of Disk Management is the legend
which shows which color belongs to each different type of volume.
Although the striped and Raid-5 volume sizes cannot be changed once they are created, notice
that if I right click on spanned volume, I have the option to shrink the volume. Once
I select the option, I am free to enter in a value.
Notice that once I shrink the volume, the spanned volume has one disk in it and the
rest of the disks now have free space on them.
In some cases you may have a disk failure and the disk needs to be replaced. In the
case of a mirror drive, if I right click the drive, I have the option "Remove Mirror".
This option will effectively remove the mirror creating two volumes with the same information
on them. If you no longer require the mirror, this is the way to remove it cleanly.
The next option down, "Break Mirrored Volume" will break the relationship between the 2
drives. You would use this option in the event that a disk fails. Essentially it does the
same as "Remove Mirror", however it will ignore the fact that a drive is not present or failed.
When I select this option, notice that I will get a warning message telling me that the
mirror drive will no longer be redundant if I choose to break the mirror.
Once I select yes, the mirror will be removed giving me 2 separate volumes. If you want
to replace a failed disk, it will be just a matter of installing another disk and creating
the mirror on that disk.
To demonstrate how to replace a failed disk in a RAID-5 volume, I will remove a disk from
the system. Notice that when the disk is removed, the RAID-5 volume will have an exclamation
mark next to it and the status has changed to "Failed Redundancy".
If I scroll down, notice that disk 4 is missing from the system, which is the first disk of
the RAID-5 volume. If I open Windows Explorer, notice that, even though a disk has failed,
the drive is still working, and I am able to create folders and files on the volume.
I will now put a replacement disk in the system to replace the disk that I removed earlier.
Notice that when the disk is put in the system, it comes up as a foreign disk. Any dynamic
disk that was used in another Windows system, when it is introduced into a different Windows
system, will come up as foreign.
Before a foreign disk can be used, it needs to be imported. To do this, right click on
the disk and select the option "Import Foreign Disks". In this case, Windows will detect
that this disk is part of a disk group. If I press o.k, notice Windows will report that
the disk is part of a striped volume and the volume is incomplete.
Once I press O.K., Windows will give a warning stating that all the disks in the striped
set are not present in the system. In this case, I know the volume is no longer being
used and the disk is free to be used for something else; so, I will press yes and continue to
import the disk into the system.
Notice the disk has been imported and is now reported as failed since it is missing the
other disks in the set. Even through the volume is incomplete, the disk still has data on
it. This will need to be removed before it can be used to replace the failed drive in
the RAID-5 volume. To do this, I will right click on the volume, select "Delete Volume",
and select yes when prompted to confirm I would like that data on the disk removed.
If I now right click on the RAID-5 volume, notice I have the option "Reactivate Volume".
If a disk is having problems, but the problem has been corrected, for example a faulty cable
caused IO problems that has been corrected, the "Reactivate Volume" will refresh the RAID-5
volume and put the disk back into operation.
In this case, the disk has been removed; so, I will instead need to select the option "Repair
Volume". Once I select this option, I need to select which disk will be used to replace
the failed disk. Once I select the disk, I will receive the familiar message that the
disk will be converted to dynamic. You may think it is strange that Windows displayed
this message since seconds ago this disk was a dynamic disk. When you delete all the partitions
on a disk, Windows will automatically change the disk to a basic disk. Once I press yes,
the disk will be added to the RAID-5 volume.
Notice that once added, the RAID-5 volume will start syncing. Once complete, the RAID-5
volume will once again have redundancy.
That covers it for using disk management in Windows. If you are interested in storage
on Windows you should also have a look at our other video on Windows Storage Spaces.
Windows Storage Spaces is a new system in Windows allowing multiple disks to be combined.
Thanks for watching and I hope you have found this video informative. See you in the next video.