Re: GPT Disk

What is the best practice and where do you get best disk performance: Basic,
Dynamic, and GPT Disk Partitions. Also what type of partition is recommended
if it stores SQL or Exchange Databases?
First. There is no performance changes, when you simply change type of
disk. Type of disk - is the format in which information about partitions
is stored (but, of course, various format has various capabilities).

Most simple is basic disk. It stores all partition information in first
sector (called MBR) in partition table. There are only 4 entries in
partition table, however there is can be special entry - extended, which
means, that this partition should be treated as virtually new disk, with
it's own MBR (this special partition called extended and Windows OS
limits you to have only one extended partition). In this extended
partition you can create new partitions, called logical drives. Windows
creates one logical drive and all remaining palce in extended partition
marked as new (nested) extended partition - so you can create virtually
any number of logical drives.

GPT disk used in modern EFI based systems. First sector emulates
traditional MBR, but then there is GUID Partition Table (so GPT comes
from here). GPT can be rather long, so GPT disk can contain large number
of partitions without weird schemes of basic disks.

Dynamic disks supported by Windows OS only (however, there is some
support in modern Linux kernels). Whole dynamic disk marked as one
partition in MBR (or GPT) and information about it's structure placed at
last 8Mb of disk. Dynamic disks allows you to construct complex
structures like spanned volumes (this volume made from pieces of various
dynamic disks, but looks like single solid partition), stripped volumes
(software RAID 0), mirrored volumes (software RAID 1) and RAID 5 volumes.

However, it may be a bad idea to use dynamic disks on SQL server or
Exchange box, because best practice is to build fail over cluster for
this applications and cluster on dynamic disks is not supported by MS.




--
With best regards
Nickolay Domukhovsky, MCSA
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Linux community software-update-anarchy polemic
    ... Remember, I'm just a monkey. ... That implies that if you have one disk per partition, ... Trust the kernel or don't trust the kernel, but either way, both ...
    (comp.os.linux.misc)
  • SUMMARY: Moving /usr From Under Root "/" To Its Own Partition
    ... One of the reasons for doing this is to end up with a smaller root ... Install the boot block and boot off the new drive. ... " In order for the root partition to be fscked and remounted ... D> temporarily on the existing disk. ...
    (SunManagers)
  • Re: Two "expert" issues I must solve before upgading
    ... I think backups are different than the other fluff you suggest - more ... out there who had a disk crash and had to start from scratch. ... >image of your current Windows 98 OS partition. ... you can restore the disk image and get back quickly ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.newusers)
  • Re: Found the chkdsk log [STOP error, data unviewable etc...]
    ... The type of the file system is NTFS. ... CHKDSK is recovering lost files. ... 33013543 KB total disk space. ... partition, etc. Oh well... ...
    (microsoft.public.win2000.file_system)
  • Re: Disk Utility to align tracks on a hardware RAID1 system
    ... you should contact you hard disk manufacture for resolution. ... > Microsoft provides RAID 1 based on software method. ... > This newsgroup only focuses on SBS technical issues. ... >>system partition but a separate drive or extended artition. ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.sbs)
Loading