The document provides an overview of the Disk Management utility in Windows 7, detailing functions such as initializing disks, creating and extending volumes, and managing partitions. It covers various tasks including shrinking volumes, changing drive letters, reactivating dynamic disks, and working with spanned volumes. Additionally, the document discusses managing virtual hard disks (VHDs) and contains warnings about potential risks to hardware.

1. By : AJAY PRAVINBHAI PANCHAL
(STUDENT OF MCA)

2. Disk management
 Disk Management is a system utility for managing hard
disks and the volumes or partitions that they contain. With
Disk Management, you can initialize disks, create volumes,
and format volumes with the FAT, FAT32, or NTFS file
systems. Disk Management enables you to perform most
disk-related tasks without restarting the system or
interrupting users.

3.  Here the Step reach Disk Management Utility of
windows 7

7. Extend volume
 You can add more space to existing primary partitions
and logical drives by extending them into adjacent
unallocated space on the same disk. To extend a basic
volume, it must be raw or formatted with the NTFS file
system. You can extend a logical drive within
contiguous free space in the extended partition that
contains it. If you extend a logical drive beyond the
free space available in the extended partition, the
extended partition grows to contain the logical drive.

8. Shrink Volume
 You can decrease the space used by primary partitions
and logical drives by shrinking them into adjacent,
contiguous space on the same disk. For example, if you
discover that you need an additional partition but do
not have additional disks, you can shrink the existing
partition from the end of the volume to create new
unallocated space that can then be used for a new
partition.

9. Change drive letter & path
 You can use Disk Management to assign a mount-point
folder path (rather than a drive letter) to the
drive. Mount-point folder paths are available only on
empty folders on basic or dynamic NTFS volumes.

10. Reactivate Volume
 A dynamic disk may become Offline if it is corrupted
or intermittently unavailable. A dynamic disk may also
become Offline if you attempt to import a foreign
(dynamic) disk and the import fails. An error icon
appears on the Offline disk. Only dynamic disks
display the Missing or Offline status.
 Only dynamic disks can be reactivated.

11. Create a Spanned Volume
 A spanned volume is a dynamic volume consisting of
disk space on more than one physical disk. If a simple
volume is not a system volume or boot volume, you can
extend it across additional disks to create a spanned
volume, or you can create a spanned volume in
unallocated space on a dynamic disk.
 You need at least two dynamic disks in addition to the
startup disk to create a spanned volume. You can
extend a spanned volume onto a maximum of 32
dynamic disks.
 Spanned volumes are not fault tolerant.

12.  Extending a spanned volume
 A spanned volume is a dynamic volume that consists of
disk space on more than one physical disk. If a simple
volume is not a system volume or boot volume, you can
extend across additional disks. If you extend a simple
volume across multiple disks, it becomes a spanned
volume.
 You can extend a volume only if it does not have a file
system or if it is formatted using the NTFS file system.
You cannot extend volumes formatted using FAT or
FAT32.

13. Shrink aSpanned Volume
 You can decrease the space used by simple or spanned
volumes by shrinking them into contiguous free space
at the end of the volume. For example, if you discover
that you need an additional partition but do not have
additional disks, you can shrink the existing partition
from the end of the volume to create new unallocated
space that can then be used for a new partition.
 When you shrink a partition, any ordinary files are
automatically relocated on the disk to create the new
unallocated space. There is no need to reformat the
disk to shrink the partition.

14. Initialize Disk
 New disks appear as Not Initialized. Before you can
use a disk, you must first initialize it. If you start Disk
Management after adding a disk, the Initialize Disk
Wizard appears so you can initialize the disk. The disk
is initialized as a basic disk.

15. Move Disks to Another Computer
 Verify volume health.
 Use Disk Management to make sure the status of the
volumes on the disks is Healthy. If the status is not
Healthy, you should repair the volumes before you
move the disks.
 Uninstall the disks
 Remove dynamic disks
 If the disks you want to move are dynamic disks, in Disk
Management, right-click the disks that you want to
move, and then click Remove Disk.

16.  Install disks in the new computer
 If the disks are external, plug them into the computer. If
the disks are internal, make sure the computer is turned
off and then physically install the disks in that
computer.
 Start the computer that contains the disks you moved
and follow the instructions on the Found New Hardware
dialog box.

17. Manage Virtual Hard Disks
 The Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) format is a publicly
available image format(iso) specification that specifies
a virtual hard disk encapsulated in a single file,
capable of hosting native file systems while supporting
standard disk and file operations. They are commonly
used as part of the Hyper-V feature of Windows
Server 2008 R2.
 You can use Disk Management to create, and attach
virtual hard disks (VHDs).

18.  The path specifying the location for the VHD must be
fully qualified and cannot be in the Windows
directory.
 The minimum size for a VHD is 3 megabytes (MB).
 A VHD can only be a basic disk.
 Because a VHD is initialized when it is created,
creating a large fixed-size VHD might take some time.

19. Warning
 This is not for a daily use.
 It may be cause a damage to your hardrive because it
real-time deal with the hardware.