CIS 170F: Windows 7 Administration

Week 4

Managing Disks
Disk Management Tasks
Moving Disks

  • Physical disks can be moved from one computer to another, but the partitions and volumes they contain require special consideration. When a basic disk is moved from one computer to another, the drive letters assigned to its logical and primary partitions will be assigned the next available drive letters on the destination computer. When a dynamic disk is moved the volume's drive letters are retained if they are not already in use on the destination computer.
  • The drive letters assigned to a basic disk's logical and primary partitions will be retained if they are not already in use on the current local computer.
  • A dynamic disk database stores the name of the computer that the dynamic disk belongs to.
  • The Disk Management console will report the status of the disk as a Foreign Disk when it recognizes that the disk does not belong to that computer. To import a disk, you must use the Import Foreign Disk option from the Disk Manager utility.
  • If a dynamic disk contains a volume that is spread across multiple dynamic disks, such as a striped or spanned volume, then all member disks must be moved at the same time. Failure to do so will leave the volume broken even if the dynamic disk's computer membership is correctly updated.