Storage Management defines how operating systems interact with disks and storage media. Windows provides support for many types of storage media, including hard drives, USB drives, tape drives and network storage such as SAN (Storage Area Networks) and iSCSI (Internet Small Computer System Interface).
There are different ways to organize the data storing in a computer system. A PC typically only has one volume on one hard drive. However, it may be beneficial to organize a disk by dividing it into several volumes.
Volumes used by servers will often extend across multiple hard drives, the purpose of this being to increase the reading speed and security.
Partitions
A hard drive consists of one or more partitions, which is a section of a hard drive. Each partition can then function as a separate disk. A partition is a collection of contiguous sectors on a disk. A partition table or other databases for disk management stores the starting sector and the size of the partitions. The task of the Partition Manager is to create, delete and manage partitions, thereby ensuring that all partitions have a unique ID.
Volumes
The storage on a computer is divided into volumes designated by a letter such as C, D or E. A simple volume is only one partition, but you can organize volumes so that they consist of multiple partitions on one or more hard drives.
A simple volume uses only one hard drive, which means that if the hard disk crashes, the volume is out of use. Using multiple volumes and multiple disks avoids this, hence you can still access data even if one hard drive is not functioning.
There are two types of volumes:
1. Simple volumes representing sectors on a single partition.
2. Multi-partition volumes representing sectors from multiple partitions
Advantages of multi-partition volumes are performance, reliability and the size of volumes.
Storing Data on Servers
Networked computers offer new possibilities for data storage. The organizing of data storage on servers is usually done in another way than for a single PC.
SAN
A SAN (Storage Area Network) is a storage medium that is available to servers via a network so that it looks as if the storage media is located locally on the server.
iSCSI
iSCSI (Internet Small Computer System Interface) is a network standard based on IP (Internet Protocol) to access a storage device via a network. The purpose of iSCSI is to help facilitate data transmission over the network and manage the storage of data over long distances.
Data Storage in a Cloud Data can be stored in a Cloud. You can store your data on servers that are located at remote server parks connected to the Internet. Instead of having your own storage system in a LAN, you can rent storage space on a server via the Internet.
