PC Maintenance Class 9: Term 2

We spent a lot of time looking at harddisk, and discussing partitions, stripe setting, and disk mirroring last time. This week, using my faithful demo computer, we had a look at how Windows these days deals with disks.

This is done using the Computer Management tool ‘Disk Management’.

Disk Management is a snap-in that's part of the Microsoft Management Console supplied with Windows XP.  Just as the name Disk Management implies it's a tool used to manage system disks, both local and remote. If you've been around personal computers for a number of years you're familiar with Fdisk, the utility that was used in conjunction with the Format command to set up hard disks from the command prompt. Disk Management, with its graphical user interface, goes a long way to eliminating the need for the command prompt utilities and makes it easy to obtain a quick overview of the system and the relationships between installed disks.

There are a few different ways to access Disk Management. I'll list three different methods so choose whichever is more convenient.

• Method 1  -  Start > Control Panel > Performance and Maintenance > Administrative Tools. Double click Computer Management and then click Disk Management in the left hand column.
• Method 2 - By default, Administrative Tools is not shown on the Start Menu but if you have modified  the Start Menu (by right clicking the Start button and selecting Properties > Customize) so it is shown then just select Start > Administrative Tools >  Computer Management and then click Disk Management in the left hand column.
• Method 3 - Click Start > Run and type diskmgmt.msc in the Open: line and click OK. The Disk Management snap-in will open.

Three Basic Areas of Disk Management

The basic Disk Management console is divided into three main areas and just about as straightforward as one can get. In the screen shot below the areas are defined by green, red, and blue rectangles. The Console Tree is the tall vertical column on the left that's defined by the green colour. If Method 3 above is used to open Disk Management it will open without the Console Tree being displayed. I suggest you get rid of the Console Tree as it really serves no purpose once Disk Management is open. Even if you used one of the other methods, the Console Tree can be eliminated by clicking the Show/Hide Console Tree icon (fourth from left) on the standard toolbar.

The red and blue areas are referred to as Top and Bottom and are both user definable via the View menu option. By default, the Top area displays the Volume List and the Bottom area displays the Graphical View. A third view called Disk List can be substituted in either pane if it's more to your liking, or the Bottom pane can be hidden completely. The View menu option also contains a [Settings...] option that allows adjustment of the colour schemes, size of the drive displays and a few other options so the console can be tailored to individual taste.