dynamic disks?

[sierrapeac]

I am trying to tell if I have RAID five drives. I go to Disk Administrator and I see that the four drives are Dynamic 0,1,2,3. Does this mean I have RAID 5? THanks

 

[Seaspray0]

Disks can be formatted as either standard or dynamic. A standard disk uses standard partitions (primary, extended). A dynamic disk basically creates a single partition. This can then be segmented into pieces like partitions but they are called volumes. If you used FDISK on a dynamic disk, it shows up like one partition. It's kind of like the difference between FAT and NTFS. You can covert to dynamic but not back to standard. dynamic disks are required if you are going to do software raid or extended volumes (raid controlled by the operating system). Disk management will show you the volumes on the disks and if they are raid, extended, or simple volumes. Pay attention to the drive letter that is assigned to each volume. Unlike DOS, you can assign the drive letter you wish to a volume (unlike DOS that assignes them in the order they are on the disk). Also, there is a color coding system in disk management that tells you if it is a simple volume, raid, stripped, etc. right click on my computer, manage, disk management.

Raid can also be done at the hardware level by scsii cards that are capable (faster and better). You will have to check with the hardware manufacturer on what hardware raid does, but as far as windows is concerned, it sees a single disk for hardware raid (you will have to use the manufacturer's utility programs to configure and view hardware raid). hardware raid settings can be seen for some controllers during the bios boot of the computer.

Having the disks as dynamic doesn't mean you have raid, it just means you have dynamic disks. Also, windows may not show raid if it is hardware based.