Professional Windows Server 1002003 Security A Technical Reference [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

This section includes important information about basic and dynamic
disks, RAID, drive letters, drive paths, disk quotas, and disk
defragmenting.

Basic Versus Dynamic Disks

Disks must be either

basic or dynamic; they
can't contain a mixture of partitions and volumes.
However, your computer can have a combination of basic and dynamic
disks in its disk subsystem.

Dynamic disks can't be accessed by MS-DOS or earlier
versions of Microsoft Windows. For example, if you physically move a
dynamic disk from a W2K Server to an NT 4.0 Server computer, the new
system will not be able to use it.

Dynamic storage is not supported on removable media. Only primary
partitions are allowed on removable media.

You can't reinstall WS2003 on a volume that has been
created from unallocated space on a dynamic disk. This is because
under the hood there are really two types of volumes:

Volumes created from partitions when a basic disk was upgraded to a dynamic disk

This type of volume has a partition table similar to that in a
partition of a basic disk, and it can't be extended.

Volumes created after conversion of unallocated space on a dynamic disk

This type of volume has no partition table and therefore
can't be recognized by the Setup program of WS2003.

When you add a new disk to a computer, the disk is automatically
configured as a basic disk. If you are using dynamic storage on your
other disks, convert the new disk to dynamic after it has been
recognized by the system.

You can't upgrade basic disks to dynamic when the
sector size exceeds 512 bytes.

RAID

The system and boot

partitions
can't be part of a volume set, stripe set, or stripe
set with parity. They can be part of a mirror set, however, which is
a good way of providing fault tolerance for these partitions.
However, hardware RAID can be used for system and boot partitions.

You can't extend a simple volume formatted with FAT
or FAT32; you can do so only with NTFS.

You can't mirror a spanned volume that uses multiple
physical disks; you can do so only with a simple volume that exists
on a single physical disk.

You can't
"unextend" a simple volume once you
have extended it, and you similarly can't do so with
spanned and striped volumes.

You can't extend a simple volume once you have
mirrored it.

You can't extend or mirror a RAID-5 volume.

You can't extend the System or Boot volume, so make
sure you give these volumes enough space when you install WS2003 on a
machine.

Resynchronization is the process whereby a stale copy of a mirrored
volume is brought up to date. Stale mirrors typically occur when one
disk in a mirrored volume is temporarily disconnected or down.
Mirrored volumes on dynamic disks are resynchronized automatically.
If you have an older mirror set on your system (by virtue of
installing WS2003 on an existing NT Server system), right-click on
the volume and select Resynchronize Mirror to manually force
resynchronization.

Breaking a mirror separates it into two simple volumes that are no
longer fault-tolerant. Removing a mirror turns one half of a mirrored
volume into unallocated space and the other half into a simple
volume.

Drive Letters

Changing drive letters
incautiously
can drastically affect whether MS-DOS or legacy Microsoft Windows
applications can continue running on the system.

Drive letters can't be changed for the System or
Boot partitions.

You can't format a partition or volume that
doesn't have either a drive letter or a mount point
assigned to it.

Drive Paths

Partitions, volumes, and logical
drives can be assigned multiple drive
paths, but only one drive letter.

Assigning a drive letter or mounting a folder to a partition or
volume doesn't make the partition or volume
available on the network: you still need to share it.

To edit a drive path, you must first remove the path and then assign
a new drive path to the partition or volume.

Disk Quotas

You should not set disk

quotas
on the system partition since problems may result if the operating
system runs out of space. This occurs if you try to install new
applications while logged on as a user who doesn't
have administrative privileges. If you install these applications
while logged on as an administrator, quota settings are ignored as
members of the Administrators group aren't limited
by any disk quota settings.

File compression is ignored when disk quotas are calculated.
Compressed files are charged to the quota according to their
uncompressed size.

Enabling disk quotas on a volume creates a small amount of overhead.
As a result, filesystem performance may degrade slightly.

Disk quotas can be assigned only to users, not to groups.

If a user tries to write to disk when her disk space has been
exceeded, the error message "insufficient disk
space" appears.

The quota limit is displayed for users as the capacity of the drive
on which quotas have been configured. For example, if a quota limit
of 25 MB is set on

G : drive, any user who
selects

G : drive in Windows Explorer or My
Computer sees that

G : has a capacity of only 25
MB, regardless of the size of the physical disk on which

G : exists.

Note that enabling and setting quota limits on a disk for all users
doesn't actually divide the disk into segments of
fixed size for each user. For example, user one and user two would
both read the capacity of

G : drive as 25 MB. If
user one placed a 5 MB file named

stuff.dat into
the root of

G : drive, the drive would show 5 MB
of used space and 20 MB of free space. If user one then logged off
and user two logged on, user two would also see the

stuff.dat file in the root of

G : drive, but this drive would display 0 bytes
of used space and 25 MB of free space. So it's not
enough to set quotas to manage disk space for users. You also have to
create home folders where they should store their work and set
appropriate permissions on these folders.

If a user finds he is reaching his limit and decides to delete files
on the quota-enabled disk, he may discover after deleting that he
still has the same space usage on the disk. This is because when a
user deletes a file for the first time on a volume or partition, by
default WS2003 creates a new Recycle Bin on the drive and simply
moves the deleted files to the Recycle Bin, resulting in no net gain
in free space. You can prevent this from occurring by configuring the
Recycle Bin properties to restrict which drives can have a Recycle
Bin on them.

You can sort the users in the Quota Entries window by using View
Arrange Items and then specifying the sort field. A good
choice would be to sort by status to see quickly which users have
exceeded their quotas, which are in a warning state, and which are
still within limits. A quicker alternative is to click on the column
title for the field you want to sort by.

You can copy quota entries from one quota-enabled volume to another
in one of two ways:

• Use Quota Export on the initial volume's
  Quota Entries window to save the settings to a file, then use Quota
  Import on the destination volume's window
  to import the saved settings.

• Drag selected quota entries from one Quota Entries window to the
  other.

You can generate a report of disk quota usage by opening the Quota
Entries window for a volume, choosing Edit Select All, and
dragging the highlighted entries into the window of a program such as
Microsoft Excel or even Microsoft Word.

Disk Defragmenter

Use Disk Defragmenter
during
times of light or no usagefor example, late at night.

You can safely defragment the system and boot volumes, but do so when
activity is light.

System files can't be defragmented using Disk
Defragmenter. This includes the Master File Table (MFT), located at
the beginning of each NTFS volume, and the paging file. Any other
open files on the system are also not defragmented, so it is a good
idea to close all running applications and files that may be open
prior to starting defragmentation.

The key figure in an analysis or defragmentation report is the
Average Fragments Per File, which should be as close to 1 as
possible. A value of 1.25, for example, would indicate 25%
defragmentation on the volume.

Always analyze a volume before defragmenting itanalyzing takes
much less time and can determine whether defragmentation is really
useful or not.

Volumes to which frequent file changes are written should be
defragmented more frequently. An example would be the volume on a
member server where users' home folders are stored.

See Also

Backup , chkdsk,
chkntfs, convert,
defrag, diskpart,

Files and Folders , format,
freedisk, label,
mountvol,

Permissions ,
recover,

Shared Folders