Technically Speaking

Monitoring resources on your system is not limited to functions available in the previously mentioned Performance Monitor. Using this method will provide you with a plethora of information about your system and should not be ignored, but here I want to focus on disks.

Windows Server 2003 includes another tool in the Computer Management Console for working with Disks that are connected to the system. This snap-in is called Disk Management and aides in changing drive letters, managing partitions, viewing free space and other things.

The Disk Management snap-in can perform the following tasks from a central view:

· Display a listing all of the drives connected to the system

· Displaying used/free space and drive size in text and GUI format

· Display the status of each drive

· Display the Disk type and File System of each drive

· Assist with changing drive letters for connected drives

· Change disk type from Basic to Dynamic

· Delete, Manage, Create partitions

To use the Disk Management snap-in open the Computer Management Console by right clicking My Computer from the Windows Server 2003 Start Menu and selecting Manage.

From here, select the Disk Management snap-in from the left pane of the console, this will display it in the right pane with a list of detected drives in the top portion and a graphical representation of the free space for each in the lower portion of the right pane.

The following information is presented in the initial view:

• Volume – Displays the name of the drive and drive letter if assigned
• Layout – Displays the current layout used on the disk, the selected logical drive may be a simple volume, a partition, a mirror, or other configuration
• Type – Displays the type of each disk, basic or dynamic
• File System – Displays the file system each disk has been formatted with
• Status – Displays the current status of the disk and the partitions the disk contains (system, boot, etc)
• Capacity – Displays the total amount of space on the disk
• Free Space – Displays the amount of space that is free on the disk
• % free – Displays the percentage of the space on the disk that is free
• Fault Tolerance – Displays if the disk is configured for fault tolerance

These options are displayed in the lower portion of the console’s right pane in a graphical format.

What other things can Disk Management do?

Showing information about connected disks is a good starting point, but the Disk Management Snap-in can perform other functions as well. For example, you can change the drive letter of any of the connected disks from this snap-in.

To do so, simply right click the drive (in the list or the GUI) that you wish to change and select Change Drive Letter or Path. This will produce a dialog listing the drive you selected and the following action buttons:

• Add – this allows you to select additional drive letters that will reference this drive
• Change – this allows you to select a different drive letter or path for the selected drive
• Remove – this allows you to remove access to a drive via an existing drive mapping

Select the drive letter you wish to change and click the change button. A dialog will appear allowing you to always mount the drive with a letter or to mount the drive as an empty folder.

The currently used drive letter will be selected in the drop down list. Simply select a new letter (or enter a path for the folder mount point) and click OK all the way out to the Computer Management Console.

One of the reasons this can be handy is because Windows doesn’t always follow the next lowest drive letter available policy. If you have a network drive mapped to a certain letter, and attach a USB drive, the USB drive will take the next lowest available letter on the local system, which may be mapped to a network resource. The mapped drive is not updated or changed to reflect this, so the USB device may need to be reassigned to a different letter.

You can also use the snap-in to handle partitions. Creating a partition is as simple as right clicking the free space in the GUI representation for a drive and selecting the action you want to perform on the drive.

New Partition – starts the new partition wizard to create a new partition in available space

New Logical Drive – starts the partition wizard to create a new mountable drive on a partition

Once the partition wizard starts click next on the welcome screen and complete the following steps to create a new primary partition:

1. Select the type of partition you wish to create, for this example, choose primary and click next
2. Enter the size of the partition in MB, click next to continue
3. Choose to assign a drive letter manually, automatically enumerate the drive letter, or do not assign a letter and click next
4. Select the file system to use in formatting the new partition, NTFS, FAT, or FAT32, or do not format the partition. You can also assign a volume label to the partition here if desired and choose between a quick format and full format, after your selections are made, click next.
5. Review your selections and click finish to create the partition.

Note: While in the new partition wizard you can also choose to create an extended partition or a logical drive, the creation steps are the same for an extended partition and begin with drive letter selection and formatting for a logical drive.

You can also mark partitions as active from the Disk Management Snap-in by right clicking an item in the list that does not have an active status and selecting Mark partition active. This will allow the BIOS of the system to see this as a valid system partition and is only valid on partitions.

Hopefully this look at the Disk Management snap-in has pointed out some of the usefulness of this tool, managing Windows Server 2003 system disks can be quite a challenge, but this tool can provide a great deal of help.

Note: This snap-in is available on all Windows 2000 and later Operating Systems.