What are volumes on a hard drive?

The drive is a filing cabinet, the volumes are file drawers, the partitions are filing folders, and the data files/program files are the individual pieces of paper in the file folder.

You can setup the filing cabinet to have a single drawer or multiples, there can be one file folder in each drawer or multiple, and there will be many pieces of paper in the file folders.  An operating system is basically a file manager for the drawers.

EDIT: A RAID setup is basically the ability to tie several filing cabinets together to act as a single unit but has the ability to rebuild one of the cabinets if it goes bad.

EDIT-EDIT: Looked up LVM to get a better definition.  LVM in Linux gives the ability to manage the number of drawers in a file cabinet, or the number of cabinets on the fly.  Seems like a great system but the average user may not need that ability.

"The drive is a filing cabinet, the volumes are file drawers, the partitions are filing folders, and the data files/program files are the individual pieces of paper in the file folder."

On a Windows basic disk (non-dynamic), it would be, "The drive is a filing cabinet, the PARTITIONS are file drawers, the VOLUMES are filing folders, and the data files/program files are the individual pieces of paper in the file folder."

A partition on a basic hard disk is a dedicated space in which drive volumes are created. Volumes inside of partitions can be shrunk/expanded on the fly with native Win 10 tools, but that cannot be done with partitions.

Partitioning a hard drive makes each segment behave like a separate disk. This is ideal for dual-booting different operating systems.

Basic Partitions

Primary Partitions

• There may be up to 4 Primary Partitions per physical disk.
• The Boot partition may only be located on a primary partition.

Extended Partitions

• Extended Partitions can use up any free space not used by the Primary Partitions.
• You may have up to 3 Primary partitions and one extended partition on any physical disk.
• Extended Partitions need to be further divided into Logical DOS drives.

Logical-DOS Partitions

• Logical Partitions are placed inside the extended partition.
• The number of Logical partitions you may have is only limited by the number of free drive letters.
• The boot partition cannot be placed on a logical partition.

Basic Partitions

The oldest Windows operating system is always installed first as the newer operating system normally writes a new boot record.

A Logical Drive can contain an operating system but never the System partition.

Different Partitions may contain a File Systems not used by Windows, so if an additional operating system is required it can also be installed on the non Windows partition.

Creating a Primary Partition

To create a Primary Partition from within Windows 2003/XP, the Disk Management Utility is used. To access Disk Management, click on Start.

Right-click on My Computer.

Select Manage.

Computer Management will appear. Click on Disk Management.

Disk Management will appear. From this screen you may view, create and delete partitions.  To create a new Primary partition on Disk 1 right-click on the unallocated space on Disk 1.

From the choices menu, select New Partition.

The New Partition Wizard will appear. Select Next to continue.

The Partition Type page will appear. Select the type of partition required. Primary Partition is selected here. Click Next to continue.

Select a size for the new partition, in this case we will chose 2048MB.

Click on Next to Continue.

A drive may be made to appear as a folder on an existing drive (This is called Mounting). The Default Drive is the next available drive letter, in this case D. Select Next to continue.

You can also choose a Volume Label, which can be used to identify the volume. In order for the partition to be used by the operating system it will have to be formatted with a file system. NTFS is the file-system of choice for a Windows Server 2003 system. Click Next to accept the default values.

The summary page will appear. To close the wizard and create the partition click Finish.

The new Primary partition is now displayed on Disk 1 and has been assigned the drive letter D:.

The new partition also appears in My Computer.

Creating an Extended Partition

To create a new Extended Partition the Disk Management Utility is used. To create a new Extended Partition on Disk 1, right-click on the Unallocated space on Disk 1.

Select New Partition.

The New Partition Wizard will appear. Select Next to continue.

The Partition Type page will appear. Select Extended Partition.

…and then hit Next.

Specify the size of the partition. The maximum amount of space available on this disk is 2039 MB. To accept the default click Next.

The summary page will appear. To close the wizard and create the partition click Finish.

The new Extended Partition is displayed on Disk 1. In order to use the partition, logical drives will have to be created inside it.

N.B. The extended partition does not appear in My Computer as an extended partition without any formatted logical drives cannot hold any data.

Creating a Logical Drive

To create a new Logical Drive within the Extended Partition, right click on the Extended Partition on Disk 1.

Select New Logical Drive.

The New Partition Wizard will appear. Select Next to continue.

Logical Drive is selected, click Next to continue.

To specify the Logical Drive size click in the “Partition size in MB” box and change the value.

1024MB will create a 1GB Logical Drive . Click Next to continue.

A drive may be made to appear as a folder on an existing drive (This is called Mounting). The Default Drive is the next available drive letter, in this case E.

Select Next to continue.

NTFS has been selected for the file system. Select “Volume label” in order to give the new partition a recognizable name.

The new Logical Drive has been named WebSite, this describes the data the Logical Drive may contain. Click Next to continue

The summary page will appear. To close the wizard and create the Logical Drive , click Finish.

The new Logical Drive is now displayed inside the Extended Partition on Disk 1 and has been labeled WebSite (E:).

Similarly, the new Logical Drive appears in My Computer and is ready for use.

Dynamic Volumes

Because of the limitations of basic partitions, dynamic volumes where introduced in Windows 2000 and continue to be supported in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

Dynamic volumes offer more flexibility than standard partitions. One of the main reasons for using dynamic volumes is to make use of volume sets (which are covered later).

Unfortunately pre-Windows 2000 computers cannot read or utilise dynamic volumes, furthermore you should not use dynamic volumes in a dual-boot environment even if all the operating systems are capable of supporting dynamic disks.

What is the purpose of volumes?

Is there a difference between volume and partition?

What is the difference between a volume and a drive?

What are volumes on a Mac hard drive?