Windows 2000 Performance Guide

Chapter 9. Filesystem Performance

In Chapter 8, we discussed the actual hardware that forms the disk storage subsystem of your Windows NT and Windows 2000 servers, including the components in the path between the operating system and the physical disk devices. In this chapter, we continue talking about the disk subsystem, but the focus here is on the logical layers that the operating system places on top of the hardware.

We start by looking at how the operating system manages the storage available on each disk and discussing the two partitioning methods available in Windows 2000. At the same time, we introduce the terminology used to describe the logical partitions that these two methods create. Windows 2000 introduced the concept of a dynamic disk in addition to the concept of a basic disk, which is based on the partitioning scheme used in Windows NT and its ancestors. The introduction of this new storage management scheme comes with a whole new set of terms that allow us to differentiate partitions built on top of basic disks from those built on top of dynamic disks.

After covering the two storage management schemes, we move up the layers of the operating system to talk about the filesystems used to manage the storage of files. Windows 2000 provides three options in choosing a filesystem: the FAT filesystem, which has been with us for a long time; the FAT32 filesystem, which is introduced in the Windows NT line of operating systems for the first time with Windows 2000; and the ...