Dynamic volume components
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Dynamic volume components

The components or virtual storage objects that are involved in a dynamic volume include its disk groups, the dynamic disks it is associated with, and its plexes, columns, and subdisks. The terms "dynamic disk" and "dynamic disk group" have been defined in the preceding sections.

The definitions for plexes, columns, and subdisks are given below:

Plexes

A plex refers to an instance of the volume. Mirrored volumes have two or more plexes. All other volumes have one plex.

Columns

A column refers to an area on the disk where all or a portion of the volume resides. Striped, RAID-5, and mirrored striped (RAID 0+1) volumes contain multiple columns. Other volume types contain one column.

Subdisks

Subdisks identify the disk location and size of each contiguous disk area in the volume. Subdisks are the basic units in which Storage Foundation allocates disk space in a volume. An SFW disk can be divided into one or more subdisks. Each subdisk represents a specific portion of a volume on a dynamic disk.

An SFW disk may contain multiple subdisks, but subdisks cannot overlap or share the same portions of disk space. Any SFW disk space that is not part of a subdisk is considered to be unallocated space, which can be used to create new volumes or to extend existing volumes.

You can move subdisks to improve disk performance.

Note:

Dynamic disks belonging to a Microsoft Disk Management Disk Group do not support operations on subdisks.
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