1: Managing Hard Disk Subsystems

Table of Contents

1. Managing Disk Storage
2. Creating and Formatting a Partition
3. Viewing and Updating Disk Properties
4. Configuring Storage
5. Mounting and Dismounting Volumes
6. Converting a Disk from Basic to Dynamic
7. Monitoring Server Hardware
8. Device Manager
9. Hardware Troubleshooting Wizard
10. Optimising Disk Performance
11. RAID-0 Volumes
12. RAID-1 and RAID-5
13. Defragmentation
14. Optimisation SAQs
15. Installing Hardware Devices
16. Device Drivers
17. Device Driver SAQs
18. Device Properties and Settings
19. Driver Upgrades
20. Driver Rollback
21. Driver Signing
22. Control Panel Items

Mounting and Dismounting Volumes

You can mount and dismount volumes from the command line with the mountvol.exe command. On basic disks, if you type mountvol x: /p, where x: represents the volume's drive letter, you can dismount a volume and take it offline.

The /p parameter is not supported on dynamic disks. The command mountvol x: /l displays the specified drive letter's volume ID. By using the syntax mountvol x: volume_ID, you can assign a drive letter to the volume and remount it to bring it back online, eg: the command:

mountvol S:\\?\Volume{55e769f0-40d5-11d4-b223-806d6172696f}\

would assign drive letter S: to the specified volume.

You can also use Disk Management to mount and dismount volumes from the GUI. You can mount and dismount volumes by right-clicking a volume and selecting Change Drive Letter and Paths. By removing the drive letter and any other paths (mount points) for the volume, you take the volume offline.

Next: Converting a Disk from Basic to Dynamic