TABLE OF CONTENTS Disk management is an important aspect of optimizing and maintaining any server and Windows Server 2003 includes a variety of tools that the administrator can use to format, partition, organize, and optimize disks. In this chapter, we take a look at how the operating system enables you to interface with the physical and logical disks in your machine, and how you can optimize disk performance to increase the overall performance of your server.
Like Windows 2000, Server 2003 supports two disk types: basic and dynamic. Upgrading your disks to dynamic status enables you to take advantage of the operating system's software RAID support, so that you can create fault-tolerant volumes. A regular schedule of defragmentation is another way you can enhance disk performance, and in this chapter, we will show you how to use both the graphical interface and the command-line tool to defragment your disks and perform other disk management tasks. You will also learn to configure disk quotas for better management of disk space on the file server, and we show you how to use the Remote Storage feature to manage volumes.
Finally, we will discuss basic troubleshooting techniques for tracking down problems with disks and volumes.
It is important for you to know the correct terminology relating to the various disk components in Windows Server 2003. There are two primary components to understand: physical disks and logical disks. Physical disks can be either basic or dynamic. Logically, they can...
