Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Administrator[ap]s Pocket Consultant

When you work with Microsoft Windows Server 2003, you'll often need to perform advanced disk setup procedures, such as creating a volume set or setting up a redundant array of independent disks (RAID) array.

• With a volume set , you can create a single volume that spans multiple drives. Users can access this volume as if it were a single drive, regardless of how many drives the actual volume is spread over. A volume that's on a single drive is referred to as a simple volume . A volume that spans multiple drives is referred to as a spanned volume .

• With RAID arrays , you can protect important business data and, sometimes, improve the performance of drives. A RAID is a redundant array of independent disks. Windows Server 2003 supports three different levels of RAID: 0, 1, and 5. RAID arrays are implemented as mirrored, striped, and striped with parity volumes .

Volumes sets and RAID arrays are created on dynamic drives and are only accessible to Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003. Because of this, if you dual boot a computer to a different or previous version of Windows, the dynamic drives are unavailable. However, computers running previous versions of Windows can access the drives over the network ”just like any other network drive.