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| Basic and dynamic volumes | ||
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A volume is a logical entity that is made up of a portion or portions of one or more physical disks. You can format a volume with a file system and can access it with a drive letter or a mount path. Like disks, volumes can be basic or dynamic. Volumes are defined as basic or dynamic, depending on whether they reside on a basic or dynamic disk.
Basic and Dynamic volume details are as follows:
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Basic volumes |
Basic volumes can be primary or extended partitions, simple logical drives that reside on extended partitions, or RAID volumes that were originally created in Windows NT Disk Administrator. |
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Dynamic volumes |
Dynamic volumes are volumes created on dynamic disks by using Storage Foundation. You can create any number of dynamic volumes in unallocated space on one or more disks. The volumes are created online without the need for restarting (except a boot or system volume). Each volume can have a FAT, FAT32, NTFS, or ReFS file system. SFW's volumes are internally organized according to established RAID levels. See Software RAID provided by SFW. You can do online extending of all dynamic volume types, and you can add up to 32 mirrors to any volume type, except RAID-5. Windows Server accesses the dynamic volumes that SFW creates in the same way that it accesses the physical partitions. The volumes are identified by a drive letter or mount point. |
Although you cannot create new NT Disk Administrator-type volumes on a basic disk, you can upgrade them to dynamic. Then these volumes have the full capabilities of other SFW dynamic volumes.