Administrator's Guide

28 RAID and Disk Management
You cannot extend a volume if any of the following are true:
• The volume is formatted as FAT or FAT32.
• The volume is using software RAID (striped, mirrored, or RAID 5 volume).
• Unallocated space is not available on a dynamic disk.
You can extend simple and spanned volumes on dynamic disks onto a maximum of 32 dynamic disks.
However, after a volume is extended, it cannot be mirrored or striped using software RAID. Additionally,
no portion of a spanned volume can be deleted without deleting the entire spanned volume.
1
Right-click the simple or spanned volume you want to extend, and then click Extend Volume .
The selected volume appears in the dialog box along with its current size.
2 Enter the amount to extend the volume, and then click OK .
3 Click OK .
The volume now shows the size of the extended volume.
For more information about extending volumes, see the context-sensitive online help.
Working With Mirrors
A mirrored volume duplicates your data to two physical disks. A mirror provides data redundancy by
simultaneously writing the same data to two separate volumes that reside on different disks. If one of the
disks fails, data continues to be written to and read from the unaffected disk.
This section discusses how to add, remove, or break a mirror.
Adding a Mirror
1 Launch the Disk Management utility.
2 In the graphical view pane, right-click the volume you want to add a mirror to and click Add Mirror .
3 Select the disk you want to use to create the mirror and click Add Mirror .
Removing a Mirror
Removing a mirror from a volume removes or destroys the data from the selected mirror and leaves the
other mirror intact. After you remove a mirror, the space on the disk used by the removed mirrored
volume becomes unallocated space. The remaining volume becomes a simple volume on the disk.
To remove a mirror, perform the following steps:
1
Launch the Disk Management utility.
2 In the graphical view pane, right-click the volume you want to remove the mirror and click Remove Mirror .
3 Select the disk you want the mirror removed from and click Remove Mirror .