Introduction to Computers Storage Management

Adding Storage Let’s say that we have one hard drive in our system; our C:/ drive, but it’s full This would create problems because I wouldn’t be able to install updates for Windows or any new applications We could add a new hard drive and a new volume, but this won’t help with creating space for Windows Update. Also, some applications have to be on the same partition as the operating system We need to be able to add the storage from another hard drive, while still using the same partition One solution to this is a mount point

Using a Mount Point A mount point allows us to map a volume to an empty folder on an existing volume In our previous example, we would first create a new empty folder in the C:/ drive Then we would install a new hard drive, create and format a partition, but don’t assign a drive letter We then assign the volume to the folder When we access this folder, the files will be stored on the new drive

Rules for Using a Mount Point For the mount point to work we need to follow certain rules: The folder we are mapping to needs to be empty The destination volume needs to formatted with NTFS The partition we are adding must not have a drive letter The destination disk can either be basic or dynamic

Extending the Volume We could also choose to extend the volume Extending the volume means taking unallocated space on a hard drive and adding it to an existing volume There are some rules regarding what space we can add to existing volumes, but we need to define the space before we can discuss these rules

Contiguous Vs Non-contiguous Space Contiguous space is free space directly next to the existing volume I want to extend Non-contiguous space is free space that is not directly next to the existing volume I want to extend Non-contiguous space may be on the same drive as the volume we want to extend, or it can be on different volumes

Basic Disks Vs Dynamic Disks Basic disks can only extend a volume into contiguous space Dynamic disks can extend a volume into contiguous space or non-contiguous space This means that I can extend my volume to a second disk if I am extending from (and to) a dynamic disk This is called a spanned volume Note that when we create a spanned volume like this, we are not getting any RAID benefits like fault tolerance or better performance

Final Notes about Extending Volumes We can never extend the system volume (the volume with our operating system) into non-contiguous space. Whether we use a basic or dynamic disk, it must always be extended into contiguous space Both volumes must be formatted in the NTFS format before we can extend the volume Note that when saving to this volume across multiple drives we won’t be able to tell which disk a file will go when saving it, but it actually doesn’t matter since our operating system will handle it

Shrinking Partitions If we have multiple volumes on a drive, we may be able to shrink one of the partitions to create space for another volume We could also use this extra space for a new volume if we want to create one After selecting “shrink volume” in disk management, the operating system will calculate how much space we can take from this drive This is limited by the amount of files on the drive and the location of immovable files