User manual

Initiated by a VSS aware copy/backup utility, VSS creates snapshots for the selected volumes and represents them as

virtual read-only devices, called volume shadow copies. Once the shadow copies are created, the copy/backup utility

starts processing the data while applications keep writing to original volumes.

Unlike Paragon Hot Processing the VSS technology provides a unique possibility to make a synchronous snapshot of

multiple volumes. This very feature can be particularly beneficial when backing up active SQL Server 2003, Exchange

2003 or Oracle databases located on multiple volumes the way it is recommended by Microsoft to improve the level of

database performance and reliability, thus providing 100-percent data consistency.

To use VSS it is necessary to have a mounted 300 MB+ NTFS partition.

Dynamic Disks

As you probably know, MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP/Vista/Server 2003/2008 support four

primary partitions per physical hard disk, one of which can be extended. Certainly there is the possibility to create

logical drives within the extended partition. Such types of disks are called basic. Windows XP Professional, Windows

2000, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2003/2008 follow the same strategy: You can have a maximum of four

primary partitions, one of which can be an extended partition with logical drives. However, these operating systems also

introduce a new disk configuration type - dynamic disk - which must be understood to effectively configure and manage

hard disks.

Dynamic disk is a physical disk that doesn't use partitions or logical drives. Instead, it contains only dynamic volumes.

Regardless of what format you use for the file system, only Win2K computers can access dynamic volumes directly.

However, computers that aren't running Win2K can access the dynamic volumes remotely when connected to the

shared folders over the network.

Dynamic disks can co-exist on a system with basic disks. The only limitation is that you cannot mix Basic and Dynamic

disks on the same hard drive.

There are five types of dynamic volumes: simple (uses free space from a single disk), spanned (created from free disk

space that is linked together from multiple disks), striped (a volume the data of which is interleaved across two or more

physical disks), mirrored (a fault-tolerant volume the data of which is duplicated on two physical disks, and RAID-5

volumes (a fault-tolerant volume the data of which is striped across an array of three or more disks).

With dynamic storage, you can perform disk and volume management without the need to restart Windows.

Limitations:

• Dynamic disks are not supported on portable computers.

• Dynamic disks are not supported on Windows XP Home Edition-based computers.

• You cannot create mirrored volumes or RAID-5 volumes on Windows XP Home Edition, Windows XP

Professional, or Windows XP 64-Bit Edition-based computers.

Thus, the dynamic disk is a new way of looking at hard disk configuration. Dynamic disks offer you more management

flexibility without the partition limitation of basic disks. Dynamic disks can contain an unlimited number of volumes, but

they cannot contain partitions or logical drives. Dynamic storage can be particularly beneficial for large-scale businesses

when dealing with many physical hard disks involving complex setup.