Windows 2000 Quick Fixes

Install a new hard disk or add a volume from unpartitioned space

Disk space seems always to be at a premium, so you may at some point need to add a hard drive or create a volume from unpartitioned space on an existing drive. Adding a drive is relatively easy, but you do have some options to consider.

Tip

Refer to Section 2.8 for details on replacing your primary drive to gain more disk space. That section explains how to clone your existing drive to the new one as well as related tasks.

Windows 2000 supports two types of disks: basic and dynamic. A basic disk is just like the type of disk you’re probably used to in Windows 9x or Windows NT. Basic disks can contain up to four partitions and are supported by DOS, Windows 9x, and Windows NT. However, the filesystem used on a given volume on a basic disk determines whether or not you can read the drive in the given OS. NTFS is supported only on Windows NT and Windows 2000, and FAT32 is not supported under Windows NT.

Dynamic disks overcome the four-partition limit of basic disks. Windows 2000 supports dynamic disks for standard volumes as well as spanned, striped, and RAID volumes. If you want to create these latter types of volumes with Windows 2000, you’ll have to do it on a dynamic disk, but you can use and modify in Windows 2000 these types of volumes created with Windows NT on basic disks. The only disadvantage of dynamic disks is that DOS, Windows 9x, and Windows NT do not support them and therefore won’t even see the drives, much ...