Product specifications

A-2
Managing Disks on a Windows 2000 System
Disk Drives on the Windows 2000 Operating
System
The Windows 2000 operating system creates and looks at disk drives
differently than the Windows NT operating system. The Windows NT
operating system used only one type of disk drive, basic. The
Windows 2000 operating system defines two types of disk drive:
• Basic — Disk drives allow disks to be divided into partitions. This
type of drive is normally used for standalone disk drives in the
Windows 2000 operating system. This is also the same type of disk
supported by the Windows NT operating system and used by
Windows NT for standalone disks and stripe sets.
• Dynamic — Disk drives allow disks to be divided into volumes.
Disk drives must be dynamic if you want to stripe, mirror, or use
disk drives in the RAID style. Avid supports the use of dynamic
disk drives when you need to create a stripe volume on your
Windows 2000 system. Dynamic disks are “upgraded” from Basic
disks. See “Windows 2000 Help for Disk Drive Information” on
page A-2 for information on creating and using dynamic disks.
n
When you transfer a stripe set from a Windows NT system to a Windows
2000 system, the Windows 2000 system does not redefine the stripe set as
dynamic. It writes special information to the drive set that can be read by a
Windows 2000 system as a stripe set, but retains the needed basic drive type
to allow you to bring the stripe set back to a Windows NT system if needed.
However, if you create a new stripe set on a Windows 2000 system, it cannot
be brought directly to a Windows NT system.
Windows 2000 Help for Disk Drive Information
If you want to use the Windows 2000 Help system to understand more
about disk drives, click the Help icon in the toolbar of the Computer
Management window. This is an easier way to access disk drive
information than navigating through the top-level Help directories.