Disk Management
Disk Management is a snap-in that's part of the Microsoft
Management Console supplied with Windows XP. If you're not
familiar with Microsoft Management Console you might want to
click here
for an overview of how it functions. Just as the name Disk
Management implies it's a tool used to manage system disks,
both local and remote. If you've been around personal
computers for a number of years you're familiar with Fdisk,
the utility that was used in conjunction with the Format
command to set up hard disks from the command prompt. Disk
Management, with its graphical user interface, goes a long
way to eliminating the need for the command prompt utilities
and makes it
easy to obtain a quick overview of the system and the
relationships between installed disks.
Accessing Disk Management
There are a few different ways to access Disk Management.
I'll list three different methods so choose whichever is
more convenient.
- Method 1 - Start > Control Panel >
Performance and Maintenance > Administrative Tools.
Double click Computer Management and then click Disk
Management in the left hand column.
- Method 2 - By default, Administrative Tools is not
shown on the Start Menu but if you have modified
the Start Menu (by right clicking the Start button and
selecting Properties > Customize) so it is shown then just select Start >
Administrative Tools > Computer Management and
then click Disk Management in the left hand column.
- Method 3 - Click Start > Run and type diskmgmt.msc
in the Open: line and click OK. The Disk Management
snap-in will open.
Three Basic Areas of Disk Management
The basic Disk Management console is divided into three
main areas and just about as straightforward as one can get.
In Fig. 01 the areas are defined by green, red, and blue
rectangles. The Console Tree is the tall vertical column on the
left that's defined by the green color. If Method 3
above is used to open Disk Management it will open without the
Console Tree being displayed. I suggest you get rid of the Console Tree
as it really serves no purpose once Disk Management is open.
Even if you used one of the other methods, the Console Tree
can be eliminated by clicking the Show/Hide Console Tree
icon (fourth from left) on the standard toolbar.
The red and blue areas are referred to as Top and Bottom
and are both user definable via the View menu option. By
default, the Top area displays the Volume List and the
Bottom area displays the Graphical View. A third view called
Disk List can be substituted in either pane if it's more to
your liking, or the Bottom pane can be hidden completely.
The View menu option also contains a [Settings...] option
that allows adjustment of the color schemes, size of the
drive displays and a few other options so the console can be
tailored to individual taste.
Fig. 01
Basic Disk Management Functions
All too often the help documentation that's
supplied with programs falls short of the mark, but in the
case of Disk Management I think Microsoft did an above
average job. I suggest giving it a thorough read through as
it contains detailed instructions for performing many tasks
that it's not immediately apparent Disk Management can
handle. I'll list a few of the more common tasks that
interest a wide cross section of users.
- Create partitions, logical drives, and volumes.
- Delete partitions, logical drives, and volumes.
- Format partitions and volumes.
- Mark partitions as active.
- Assign or modify drive letters for hard disk
volumes, removable disk drives, and CD-ROM drives.
- Obtain a quick visual overview of the properties
of all disks and volumes in the system.
- Create mounted drives on systems using the NTFS
file system.
- Convert basic disks to dynamic disks.
- Convert dynamic to basic disks, although this is
a destructive operation.
- On dynamic disks, create a number of specialty
volumes including spanned, striped, mirrored, and
RAID-5 volumes.
Disk Management makes extensive use of context menus.
Right clicking on a drive or partition will normally
present a menu that contains the options and procedures
available for the particular device. The Action menu
item is an alternate method for determining the same
information. An advantage of using Disk Management is
the majority of changes you can make don't require
rebooting the system so you can continue working while
the procedures complete.
At first glance it
may appear there isn't much substance to Disk
Management, but in truth it can be quite useful for many
tasks. That's not to say it's without limitations because it
does have some. One of the major limitations is the
inability to resize a partition to make it smaller in a
non-destructive manner. That limitation, and others, can be overcome by a
number of third party utilities to fill in the gaps where
Disk Management is lacking, but a
full understanding of what Disk Management can and cannot do
relative to your individual situation and needs will help you determine
if a third party disk management utility is necessary.
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