windows磁盘（disk）分区（partition）卷（volume）

一、diskpart产看相关信息，初步感性认知

（1）使用管理员权限打开 cmd，输入 diskpart命令

 

 

 

 

二、卷（volume）和分区（partition）的不同

1、A volume is a single accessible storage area with a single file system. A partition is a logical division of a hard disk. Both are the units of data storage。

2、Types

There are five volume types: simple volume, mirrored volume, striped volume spanned volume, and RAID-5 volume, while there are three partition types: primary partition, logical partition, and extended partition.

Volume Types

Simple Volume: it is a physical disk that functions like a physically independent unit.

Mirrored Volume: it uses two copies on separate physical disks to duplicate data. When new data is written to the mirrored volume, it will be written to the two copies. If one of the physical disks fails, the data on the disk becomes unavailable, but mirrored volume is a fault-tolerant volume, which means the data on the other physical disk is still usable.

Striped Volume: it is created by combing areas of free space on two or more disks into one logical volume. This volume type does not provide fault tolerance, which means the entire volume will fail when one of the disks containing a striped volume fails.

Spanned Volume: it combines areas of unallocated space from multiple disks into one logical volume. When new data is written into a spanned volume, data will first fill up the free space on the first disk, the fill up that on the next disk, and so on.

RAID-5 Volume: it is a volume with data and parity striped intermittently across three or more physical disks. As a fault-tolerant volume, it allows you to recreate the data that was on the failed portion from the remaining data and parity when a portion of a physical disk doesn’t work.

Partition Types

Primary Partition: it is a hard disk partition that is identified by a drive letter and is used for storing Windows operating systems and other data. The C drive is often a primary partition.

Logical Partition: it is a contiguous area on the hard disk and it consists of one or more logical partitions.

Extended Partition: it is a partition that consists of additional logical partitions. Differing from a primary partition, you don’t need to assign a drive letter to it.

Max Size

What is the max size of a partition and a volume?

As we know, contiguous space on the same disk can be divided into one area, and therefore the max size of a partition is the hard drive space.

In contrast, the max size of a volume can be larger – when it is not a simple volume. The other four types of volume can be created on two or more disks and this combines these disks into a large volume, so that’s why the max size of a volume is larger than that of a partition.

Creation

The biggest difference between a volume and partition is the type of disk used. A volume is created on a dynamic disk, while a partition is created on a basic disk.

Note: When you create a partition via Disk Management, you will find that the New Simple Volume option is offered.

Basic disks are the most common type of partition used in Windows OS. They use a partition table to keep track of all partitions on them and support two styles of partitions – master boot record (MBR) and GUID partition table (GPT).

Dynamic disks also support MBR and GPT. However, they use a hidden logical disk manager (LDM) or virtual disk service (VDS) to track information about the volumes on them and this decides that dynamic disks are more flexible than basic disks.

To learn more about the differences between basic disks and dynamic disks, please read the comparison.

Max Number on Disk

Another difference is the max number of volume and partition on the hard disk.

Regardless of whether dynamic disks on a system use the MBR or GPT partition style, you can create up to 2,000 dynamic volumes on them.

However, the max number of partitions on a basic disk is determined by the style of partitions that the disk uses. When the basic disk uses the MBR partition style, you can create four primary partitions or three primary partitions and one extended partition that can consist of many logical partitions. When the basic disk uses the GPT partition style, you can create up to 128 primary partitions.

MBR vs. GPT Guide: What's The Difference and Which One Is Better

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Reliability and Security

Compared with partitions, volumes feature higher reliability and security because data on volumes can be shared with two or more dynamic disks.

Now, what’s your opinion of partition vs volume? Regardless of whether you prefer volume or partition, go on reading. The next part shows you how to create a volume or partition on a disk.