Lesson Objectives After completing this lesson, you will be able to:

 Describe the different ways to access storage.

 Explain the difference between network-attached storage (NAS) and storage area networks (SANs).
 Compare MBR and GUID partition table (GPT) disks.
 Describe how to convert a basic disk to a dynamic disk.
 Describe the tools available for managing disks.
 Describe a simple volume.
 Describe mirrored, spanned, and striped volumes
 Create volumes, resize, and manage volumes.

Local hard disk

 A locally attached hard disk is also known as direct-attached storage (DAS).
 Depending on the hard disk type and the type of hard disk controller, you might get varying
performance of the local hard disk.
 The solid-state drives (SSDs), which use flash card technology, are the fastest hard disks, but they
are more expensive than older technologies.
 SSDs are also often smaller in capacity compared to the normal hard disk drives.
 All tablets use some kind of flash card technology.
 They use SSDs when they require more capacity for local storage.
 In rare occasions, you may need to acquire a driver for the hard disk before you can install Windows
10.

Advantages of using local hard disks include:

 Availability. The local hard disk is always available, including in situations where there is no network
connectivity.
 Performance. Only a single user uses the local hard disk. In addition, the bandwidth of your network
connection does not limit you.

Disadvantages of using local hard disks include:

 Backup. You will not automatically have a backup of your data.
 Physical failures. If your local hard disk fails, you will not be able to start your computer.

Virtual hard disk

 Windows 10 fully supports virtual hard disks.
 The virtual hard disk (.vhd or .vhdx) file format specifies a virtual hard disk encapsulated in a single
file.
 It is capable of hosting native file systems and supporting standard disk operations.
 Virtual hard disks are an integral part of virtual machine environments such as Client Hyper-V.
 You can use virtual hard disks for several purposes and in any scenario where you might use a
physical hard disk.
 If you plan to use a virtual hard disk in place of a physical disk, consider the following advantages
and disadvantages.
 Advantages of using virtual hard disks include:
 o Portability. Virtual hard disk files might be easier to move between systems, particularly
when you use shared storage.
o Backup. A .vhd file represents a single file for backup purposes.

Disadvantages of using virtual hard disks include:

o Performance. In high I/O scenarios, the additional overhead of using a virtual hard disk can
affect performance.
o Physical failures. A .vhd file does not protect against cluster failure on the underlying
physical disks.

Supporting virtual disk formats

 Windows 10 supports both the .vhd and .vhdx virtual disk formats.
 The .vhdx format has a metadata structure that reduces data corruption and improves alignment on
large sector disks.
 Virtual hard disks are limited to 2 TB of storage, whereas the new .vhdx format is suitable for virtual
disks up to a supported maximum size of 64 TB.

Server-based storage
 Using Windows Server 2016 as a file server gives you central access to your files.
 Although the file server contains local storage, larger organizations will often acquire separate
storage systems optimized for performance and security.
 You connect these separate storage systems to the server
 Windows Server 2012 R2 adds functionality, such as Work Folders, offline files, and failover
clustering, that makes it suitable as a file server for both small, medium, and large enterprises.

Advantages of using server-based storage include:

 Redundancy. Because most server-based storage protects data by using redundant disk systems,
you will not suffer data loss due to the failure of a single hard disk.
 Backup. Automatic backup is in place for most server-based storage.
 Performance. Server-based storage is often faster than local hard disks because it uses faster disks,
which you configure in a performance-optimized way. Disadvantages of using server-based storage
include:
 Availability. You need a network connection to access server-based storage. If you are outside your
company’s network, you might not be able to access the storage remotely, unless you use some kind
of caching technique, such as offline files.
 Performance. You can experience bottlenecks in both network connectivity and access to server-
based storage because many users are accessing the same storage simultaneously.

Network and Cloud Storage Options

External Storage Systems
 There are two types of external storage systems:
 NAS (Network-Attached Storage) and
 SAN (Storage Area Networking).
 You use NAS for both client-based and server-based computing,
 you most often use SAN for server-based computing and then make it accessible to users.
 Although Windows 10 includes the iSCSI initiator that allows you to connect to SANs, you usually use
SANs in server-based computing.

NAS
 NAS is storage that is connected to a dedicated storage device.
 You can access it over the network.
 Unlike DAS, NAS is not directly attached to a computer or server, and users access it over the
network.
 NAS has two distinct solutions:
o a low-end appliance (NAS only), and
o an enterprise-class NAS that integrates with SAN.
 Each NAS device has a dedicated operating system that controls access to the data on the device,
which reduces the overhead associated with sharing the storage device with other server services.
 An example of NAS software is Windows Storage Server, a special edition of Windows Server 2012
R2.
 NAS devices typically provide file-level access to the storage, which means that you can access the
data on the storage only as files.
 You must use protocols such as
o Common Internet File System (CIFS),
o Server Message Block (SMB), or
o network file system (NFS)
 to access the files.
 To enable NAS storage, you need a storage device.
 Frequently, these devices do not have any server interfaces such as keyboards, mice, and monitors.
 To configure the device, you need to provide a network configuration, and then access the device
across the network.
 You can then create network shares on the device by using the name of the NAS and the share
created. The network’s users can then access these shares.

SAN (Storage Area Network)

 SAN is a high-speed network that connects computer systems or host servers to high-performance
storage subsystems.
 A SAN usually includes various components such as:
o host bus adapters (HBAs),
o special switches to help route traffic, and
o storage disk arrays with logical unit numbers (LUNs) for storage.
 A SAN enables multiple servers to access a pool of storage in which any server can potentially access
any storage unit.
 Because a SAN is a network, you can use a SAN to connect many different devices and hosts and
provide access to any connected device from anywhere.
 SANs provide block-level access.
 This means that, rather than accessing the content on the disks as files by using a file access
protocol, SANs write blocks of data directly to the disks by using protocols such as Fibre Channel
over Ethernet or Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI).
 Today, most SAN solutions offer SAN and NAS together.
 The backend head units, disks, and technologies are identical, and only the access method differs.
 Enterprises often provision block storage from the SAN to the servers by using Fibre Channel over
Ethernet or iSCSI.
 NAS services use the CIFS and NFS (Network File System) protocols.
 Common Internet File System (CIFS) is a file-sharing protocol that provides an open and cross-
platform mechanism for requesting network server files and services.
 CIFS is based on the enhanced version of Microsoft’s Server Message Block (SMB) protocol for
Internet and intranet file sharing.
 If you want to use a SAN, Windows 10 supports the iSCSI protocol with the iSCSI initiator.

Cloud Based
 Storage Cloud storage simplifies access to your files as long as you have Internet access.
 When you sign in with your Microsoft account, you can access all the files on your Microsoft
OneDrive.
 Microsoft also offers enterprise cloud storage with Microsoft Azure Storage.
 Cloud storage provides several benefits:
o Easy access anywhere to data such as photos, music, and documents.
o Automatic backup of important files.
o Synchronizing favorites and other settings across devices.

OneDrive
OneDrive offers the benefits of making files accessible by any device, while offering a seamless end user
experience in the desktop client.

Azure Storage
 Microsoft Azure Storage is a cloud storage solution that developers and IT professionals use to build
applications.
 Azure Storage saves data in the cloud.
 You can access Azure Storage by using any type of device and by using any type of application, from
the smallest app to applications with terabytes of data.
 Azure Storage can handle four types of storage:
o Blob storage stores any type of text or binary data. This includes documents and media files.
o Table storage stores structured datasets. Table storage is a NoSQL key-attribute data store.
o Queue storage provides messaging for workflows. Communication between different
components of cloud services is also one of the uses of queue storage.
o File storage uses the standard SMB protocol. Azure virtual machines and cloud services can
share file data with file storage. On-premises applications can also access file data in a share
via file storage.

MBR and GPT

 Before you can use a disk in Windows 10, you must prepare it for use.
 You must first partition the disk by using
o the master boot record (MBR) partitioning scheme
o or the globally unique identifier (GUID) partition table-partitioning scheme.
 After partitioning the disk, you must create and format one or more volumes before an operating
system can use the disk. MBR disks
 The MBR contains the partition table for a disk and a small amount of executable code called the
master boot code.
 Partitioning a disk creates the MBR automatically on the first sector of the hard disk.
 The MBR contains a four-partition entry table that describes the size and location of a disk partition
by using 32-bit logical block addressing (LBA) fields.
 Most Windows 10 editions, such as the 32-bit and 64-bit versions that run on motherboards with
BIOS firmware, require an MBR-partitioned system disk and are not bootable with a larger capacity
disk.
 Newer motherboards enabled with Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) can read both MBR
and the newer Grid Partition Table (GPT) disks.

How MBR disks work

 The MBR is stored at a consistent location on a physical disk, enabling a computer’s BIOS to
reference it.
 During the startup process, a computer examines the MBR to determine which partition is active on
the installed disks.
 The active partition contains the operating system startup files.

Features of MBR disks

 The MBR partition scheme has been in use for a long time.
 It supports both current and older desktop operating systems, such as the MS-DOS and Microsoft
Windows Server 4.0 operating systems.
 Consequently, most operating systems today support the MBR partition scheme.
 However, the MBR partition scheme imposes certain restrictions, including:
 Four partitions on each disk.
 MBR-based disks are limited to four partitions.
 All of these can be primary partitions, or one can be an extended partition with logical volumes
inside.
 You can configure the extended partition to contain multiple volumes.
 A 2 TB-maximum partition size. A partition cannot be larger than 2 TB.
 No redundancy provided.
 The MBR is a single point of failure.
 If it is corrupt or suffers damage, it can render a computer incapable of starting.
 MBR disks can be either basic or dynamic disk types.
 Dynamic disks support additional options that are not available on a basic disk, including volumes
that are able to span multiple disks and fault-tolerant volumes.

GPT disks
 GPT disks contain an array of partition entries that describe the start and end LBA of each partition
on a disk.
 Each GPT partition has a unique GUID and partition-content type.
 Each LBA that the partition table describes is 64 bits in length.
 The UEFI specifies the GPT format, but it is not exclusive to UEFI systems.
 Both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows operating systems support GPT for data disks on BIOS systems.
 However, they cannot boot from them. 64-bit Windows operating systems support GPT for boot
disks on UEFI systems.

Features of GPT disks

 GPT disks address the limitations of MBR disks and provide support for the following:
 128 partitions per disk. This is a vast improvement over MBR-based disks.
 18 exabytes of volume size. This is a theoretical maximum because hard-disk hardware that can
support such vast volume sizes is not yet available.
 Redundancy. Cyclic redundancy check (CRC) duplicates and protects the GPT.
 You can implement GPT disks on Windows Server 2008 and newer versions, Windows 10, Windows
8.1, Windows 8, Windows 7, and Windows Vista.
 You cannot use the GPT partition style on removable disks.

GPTarchitecture
A GPT-partitioned disk defines the following sectors:

o Sector 0 contains a legacy protective MBR, which contains one primary partition that covers the
entire disk:
o The protective MBR protects GPT disks from previously released MBR disk tools, such as the MS-
DOS fdisk or Windows NT Disk Administrator. These tools view a GPT disk as a single
encompassing (possibly unrecognized) partition by interpreting the protected MBR, rather than
mistaking the disk for one that does not have any partitions.
o This means that the tools will not view a GPT-initialized disk as having no partitions, making it
less vulnerable to incidental data loss.
o Legacy software that is not aware of GPT interprets only the protected MBR when it accesses a
GPT disk.
o Sector 1 contains a partition table header.
o The partition table header contains the unique disk GUID, the number of partition entries
(usually 128), and pointers to the partition table.
o Sector 2 The partition table starts at sector 2.
o Each partition entry contains:
o a unique partition GUID,
o the partition offset, l
o length,
o type (also a GUID),
o attributes, and
o a 36-character name.
o The following table describes the partitions that Windows 10 creates when you install it
on a GPT disk.

Partition Type Size Description

A Extensibl 100 Contains the Windows Boot Manager, the files that an
e Megabytes operating system requires to start, the platform tools
Firmware that run before an operating system starts, and the files
 Interface that the Windows Boot Manager must access before an
(EFI) operating system starts. The EFI system partition must
system be the first partition on the disk because it is impossible
partition to span volumes when the EFI system partition is
logically between what you are attempting to span.
B Microsoft 128MB Reserved for Windows components. The Disk
Reserved Management tool hides this partition. It does not
partition receive a drive letter. Usage example: When you convert
(MSR a basic GPT disk to dynamic, the system decreases the
partition) size of the MSR partition and uses that space to create
the Logical Disk Manager Metadata partition.
C Operating Remaining This partition contains the operating system and is the
system Disk size of the remaining disk

Dynamic Disks
- Dynamic disks provide features that basic disks do not.
- You can create volumes that span multiple disks and fault-tolerant volumes.
- Dynamic disks can also use the MBR or GPT partition styles.
- Dynamic disks use a database to track information about volumes on dynamic disks in the
computer.
- Each dynamic disk in a computer stores a replica of the dynamic disk database, which is
useful if you experience a corrupted dynamic disk database.
- Windows can repair the corrupted dynamic disk by using the database on another dynamic
disk.
- The partition style of the disk determines the location of the database.
- On MBR partitions, Windows 10 stores the database in the last 1 MB of the disk.
- On GPT partitions, the database is located in a 1-MB reserved and hidden partition.
You can perform the following operations only on dynamic disks:
- Create and delete spanned, striped, and mirrored volumes.
- Extend a simple volume to a noncontiguous space or spanned volume.
- Remove a mirror from a mirrored volume.
- Repair mirrored volumes.
- Reactivate a missing or offline disk.

You should be aware of the following considerations regarding dynamic disks:

- You cannot convert a basic disk to a dynamic disk unless there is at least 1 MB of unused
space on the disk because of the Logical Disk Manager database.
- You cannot convert a dynamic disk to a basic disk without losing data. You need to delete all
dynamic volumes on the disk. Disk Management automatically converts the disk to basic
when you delete the last volume.
- You cannot use Windows PowerShell to manage dynamic disks. The storage cmdlets will not
recognize dynamic disks.

Convert a basic disk to a dynamic disk

- You use the Disk Management snap-in to convert a basic disk to a dynamic disk.
- Right-click the disk you want to convert and
- select Convert to Dynamic Disk.
- Note: In a multiboot scenario, if you are in one operating system, and you convert a basic MBR disk
that contains an alternate operating system to a dynamic MBR disk, you will not be able to start in
the alternate operating system.

Basic disks vs. dynamic disks

- The following table describes the differences between using basic and dynamic disks.

Disk type Advantages Disadvantages

Basic disks - Compatible with most - Only uses contiguous space on one disk.
operating systems. - Limited # of partitions on MBR disk
- Convert to dynamic disk
without data loss.
Dynamic - Multi-disk volumes. - Only compatible with Windows.
disks - Fault-tolerant volumes. - Does not convert to basic disk without
1024 volumes on MBR data loss
disks.

Disk Management Tools

o You can use the following tools to manage Windows 10 disks and the volumes or partitions that they
contain:
o Disk Management. A GUI for managing disks and volumes, both basic and dynamic, locally or on
remote computers.
o After you select the remote computer that you want to manage, you can perform the same tasks
that you typically perform when you use a local computer.
o DiskPart. A scriptable command-line tool with functionality that is similar to Disk Management,
which also includes advanced features. You can create scripts to automate disk-related tasks, such
as creating volumes or converting disks to dynamic. This tool always runs locally.
o Windows PowerShell 5.0. Windows PowerShell is a scripting language that accomplishes many tasks
in the Windows environment. Starting with Windows PowerShell 3.0, disk management commands
are available for use as stand-alone commands or as part of a script.
o Note: Windows 10 does not support remote connections in workgroups.
o Both the local computer and the remote computer must be in a domain for you to use Disk
Management to manage a disk remotely.
o Note: Do not use disk-editing tools such as dskprobe.exe to make changes to GPT disks.
o Any change that you make renders the checksums invalid, which might cause the disk to become
inaccessible.
o To make changes to GPT disks, use Windows PowerShell, DiskPart, or Disk Management.
o With either tool, you can initialize disks, create volumes, and format a volume file system.
o Additional common tasks include moving disks between computers, changing disks between basic
and dynamic types, and changing the partition style of disks.
o You can perform most disk-related tasks without restarting a system or interrupting users, and most
configuration changes take effect immediately.

Disk Management
o By using the Disk Management snap-in to the Microsoft Management Console (MMC),
administrators can manage volumes quickly and confirm the health of each volume. Disk
Management in Windows 10 provides the same features as previous versions, including:

Simpler partition creation.

o When you right-click a volume, you can choose whether to create a basic, spanned, or striped
partition directly from the menu.

Disk conversion options.

o When you try to extend a partition to a noncontiguous area on the same or another disk, Disk
Management prompts you to convert the disk to dynamic.
o You also can convert basic disks to dynamic disks without incurring data loss.
o However, converting a dynamic disk to basic is not possible without first deleting all of the volumes.

Extend and shrink partitions.

o You can extend and shrink partitions from Disk Management.
o To open Disk Management, use this procedure:
1. Select Start and type disk.
2. This will display the search window.
3. Continue typing diskmgmt.msc in the search box,
4. and then select diskmgmt.msc in the results list.

DiskPart
o By using DiskPart, you can manage fixed disks and volumes by using scripts or direct input from the
command line.
o At the command prompt, type DiskPart, and then enter commands at the DiskPart command
prompt.
o The following are common DiskPart actions:
o To view a list of DiskPart commands, at the DiskPart command prompt, type commands.
o To create a DiskPart script in a text file and then run the script, type a script similar to
diskpart /s testscript.txt.
o To create a log file of the DiskPart session, type DiskPart /s testscript.txt > logfile.txt.
o The following table shows several DiskPart commands that you will use frequently.

Command Description
list disk Displays a list of disks and related information, including: Disk size The
amount of available free space on the disks Whether the disks are basic or
dynamic Whether the disks use the MBR or GPT partition style The disks
marked with an asterisk (*) are the ones against which the commands will
execute.
select disk Selects the specified disk, where disknumber is the disk number, and gives
disknumber it focus.
 convert gpt Converts a disk with the MBR partition style to a basic disk with the GPT
partition style
Windows PowerShell
- Prior to Windows PowerShell 3.0, if you wanted to script disk management tasks, you had to make
calls to Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) objects or include DiskPart in your scripts.
- Windows PowerShell 3.0 and newer versions include commands for natively managing disks. The
following table details some Windows PowerShell commands.

Command Description Additional parameters

Get-Disk Returns information on FriendlyName returns information about disks that
all disks or disks that have the specified friendly name. Number returns
you specify with a filter. information about a specific disk.
Get-Disk -Number 6
Clear-Disk Cleans a disk by ZeroOutEntireDisk writes zeros to all sectors of a disk.
removing all partition
information.
Initialize-Disk Prepares a disk for use. PartitionStyle PartitionStyle specifies the type of the
By default, it creates a partition, either MBR or GPT.
GPT partition. Initialize-Disk -Number 1 -
PartitionStyle MBR
Initialize-Disk -VirtualDisk (Get-
VirtualDisk -FriendlyName UserData)
Set-Disk Updates a physical disk PartitionStyle PartitionStyle specifies the type of the
with the specified partition, either MBR or GPT. You can use this to
attributes. convert a disk that was initialized previously.
Set-Disk -Number 5 -IsOffline $False
Get-Volume Returns information on DriveLetter Char gets information about the specified
all file systems’ volumes, drive letter. FileSystemLabel String returns information
or those volumes that on the NTFS file systems or Resilient File System (ReFS)
you specify with a filter. volumes.
Get-Volume -DriveLetter C
Simple Volumes
- The most commonly used disk arrangement is a simple volume.
- This volume is a contiguous, unallocated area of a physical hard disk that you format to create a file
system.
- You then assign a drive letter to it or mount it in an existing volume by using a volume mount point.
- Can be extended it contiguous space is free on the same disk
- If this disk is a basic disk and you are extending it into non contiguous space the disk will be
converted to a dynamic disk

Simple volume characteristics

- A simple volume is a volume that encompasses available free space from a single, basic, or dynamic
hard-disk drive.
- A simple volume can consist of a single region on a disk or multiple regions of the same disk that link
together.
- Simple volumes have the following characteristics:
o Not fault-tolerant. Disk failure leads to volume failure.
 - Volume I/O performance is the same as disk I/O performance.

Simple volume scenarios

The following table contains example scenarios for disks and volumes.

Scenario Description
Business desktop Most business users require a basic disk and one basic volume for storage, but
computer with one do not require a computer with volumes that span multiple disks or that
disk provide fault tolerance. This is the best choice for those who require simplicity
and ease of use.
Business desktop If small business users want to upgrade their operating systems and reduce
computer with one the impact on their business data, they must store the operating system in a
disk and more than separate location from business data. This scenario requires a basic disk with
one volume two or more simple volumes. Users can install an operating system on the first
volume, creating a boot volume or system volume, and use the second volume
to store data. When a new version of an operating system releases, users can
reformat the boot or system volume, and then install the new operating
system. The business data, located on the second volume, remains untouched.

Mirrored, Spanned and Striped Volumes

- A mirrored volume presents two disks to the operating systems as a single logical volume.
- A mirrored volume always consists of exactly two disks.
- Each disk has an identical copy of the data that is on the logical volume.
- A spanned volume joins areas of unallocated space on at least two and at most 32 disks into a single
logical disk.
- Similar to a spanned volume, a striped volume also requires two or more disks.
- However, striped volumes map stripes of data cyclically across the disks.
- Basic disks support only primary partitions, extended partitions, and logical drives.
- To use mirrored, spanned, or striped volumes, you must convert the disks to dynamic disks as
described previously.
- Dynamic disks use a database to track information about the disk’s dynamic volumes and the
computer’s other dynamic disks.
- Because each dynamic disk on a computer stores a replica of the dynamic disk database, the
Windows operating system can repair a corrupted database on one dynamic disk by using the
database on another dynamic disk.

- Characteristics of mirrored volumes

 A mirrored volume also is a RAID-1 (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) volume.

 A mirrored volume combines equal-sized areas of unallocated space from two disks.
 You use a mirrored volume when you wish to provide redundancy for your system partition.
  Both spanned volumes and striped volumes require a Windows operating system to be running
to recognize the volume—therefore, neither of those solutions can provide protection against
disk failures for a system partition.
 When creating a mirrored volume, the disk for the shadow volume must be at least the same
size as the volume you want to mirror.
 Once you establish the mirror, you cannot resize the mirrored volume.
 There are two main benefits of using mirrored volumes.
 Recovering from a disk failure is very quick as there is no data to rebuild.
 Additionally, read operations have a slight performance boost because you can read from both
disks simultaneously.

- There are two main disadvantages of using mirrored volumes. Write operations are slightly slower
as every write needs to occur on both disks. Mirrored volumes are the least efficient use of space
compared with other disk configurations. Characteristics of spanned volumes A spanned
volume gives users the option to gather noncontiguous free space from two or more disks into the
same volume. A spanned volume does not provide any fault tolerance. Additionally, because the
areas that you combine are not necessarily equally distributed across the participating disks, there is
no performance benefit to implementing spanned volumes. I/O performance is comparable to
simple volumes. You can create a spanned volume by extending a simple volume to an area of
unallocated space on a second disk, or you can designate multiple disks during the volume-creation
process. The benefits of using spanned volumes include uncomplicated capacity planning and
straightforward performance analysis. If you create a new spanned volume, you must define the
same properties as when you create a simple volume in terms of size, file system, and drive letter. In
- addition, you must define how much space to allocate to the spanned volume from each physical
disk. You can create spanned volumes on dynamic disks only. If you attempt to create a spanned
volume on basic disks, the Windows operating system prompts you to convert the disk to dynamic
after you have defined the volume’s properties and confirmed the choices. It is possible to shrink a
spanned volume. However, it is not possible to remove an area from a specific disk. For example, if a
spanned volume consists of three 100-MB partitions on each of three disks, you cannot delete the
third element. If you install additional hard disks, it is possible to extend the spanned volume to
include areas of unallocated space on the new disks, as long as the total number of disks does not
exceed the 32-disk limit for spanned volumes.

Characteristics of striped volumes

- A striped volume is a RAID-0 volume. A striped volume combines equal-sized areas of unallocated
space from multiple disks. You should create a striped volume when you want to improve the I/O
performance of a computer. Striped volumes provide for higher throughput by distributing I/O
across all disks that are a part of the volume. The more physical disks that you combine, preferably
across several disk controllers, the faster the potential throughput is. For most workloads, a striped
data layout provides better performance than simple or spanned volumes, as long as you select the
striped unit appropriately, based on workload and storage hardware characteristics.
- The overall storage load balances across all physical drives. Striped volumes also are well suited for
isolating the paging file. By creating a volume where Pagefile.sys is the only file on the entire
volume, the paging file is less likely to become fragmented, which helps improve performance.
Redundancy is not required for the paging file normally. Striped volumes provide a better solution
 than RAID-5 for paging file isolation. This is because the paging file activity is write-intensive, and
RAID-5 is better suited for read performance than write performance. Because there is no allocated
capacity for redundant data, striped volumes do not provide data-recovery mechanisms such as
those in RAID-1 and RAID-5.
- The failure of any disk results in data loss on a larger scale than it would on a simple volume,
because it disrupts the entire file system that spreads across multiple physical disks.
- The more disks that you combine in RAID-0, the less reliable the volume becomes.
- When you create a striped volume, you define the file system, drive letter, and other standard
volume properties. Additionally, you must define the disks from which to allocate free space. The
allocated space from each disk must be identical in size. It is possible to delete a striped volume, but
it is not possible to extend or to shrink the volume.
- Note: RAID-5 is a striped set with parity volume. It combines the speed of striped volumes with fault
tolerance. It is not possible to create RAID-5 in Disk Management in Windows 10.

Managing Existing Volumes

- Windows 10 allows you to resize a volume by using the Shrink Volume or Extend Volume options
within the provided disk tools.
- You can shrink existing volumes to allow space to create additional, unallocated space to use for
data or apps on a new volume.
- On the new volume, you can:
o Install another operating system, and then perform a dual boot.
o Save data separately from the operating system.
- To perform a shrink operation, ensure that the disk is formatted with the NTFS file system or, if it is
unformatted, ensure that you are part of the Backup operator or Administrators group.
- When you shrink a volume, contiguous free space relocates to the end of a volume. If you want to
ensure that the maximum amount of space is available, make sure you perform the following tasks
before shrinking:
- Defragment the disk. This rearranges the disk sector so that unused space is at the end of the disk.
- Ensure that the volume you are shrinking is not storing any page files. When you shrink a volume,
unmovable files (for example, a page file) do not relocate automatically. It is not possible to
decrease the allocated space beyond the point where the unmovable files are located. If you need
to shrink a partition further, transfer the unmovable file to another disk, shrink the volume, and
then transfer the unmovable file back to the disk. You can shrink simple and spanned volumes, but
not others. You can increase the size of a simple volume in the following ways:
- Extend the simple volume on the same disk. The disk remains a basic disk if the free space is
adjacent to the volume you want to extend. If it is not contiguous space, then the disk will convert
to a dynamic disk.
- Extend a simple volume to include unallocated space on other disks on the same computer. This
creates a spanned volume.