Spanned volume

Spanned volume is a method for disk capacity management on dynamic disk. If you want to create a larger volume, but the dynamic disk space is insufficient, you can merge unallocated spaces on multiple dynamic disks into one volume with enough size by creating spanned volume. And the spanned volume can occupy different spaces on different dynamic disk, which facilitates extending spanned volume at any time. Here, MiniTool Partition Wizard, the powerful and professional partition magic software developed by MiniTool Solution Ltd, is recommended to help users create and manage spanned volume.

Volume types on dynamic disk
Dynamic disk has been introduced by Microsoft since Widows 2000 operating system. It has more flexibility and features than common basic disk. Before using dynamic disk, you must distribute disk capacity, but the distributed area is called volume, which is different from basic disk. Dynamic disk provides 5 types of volumes:

Simple volume: simple volume exists on sole dynamic disk. Simple volume is similar to partition in basic disk, but simple volume has no limitation on quantity and space size.

Spanned volume: spanned volume includes two or more dynamic disks (32 dynamic disks at most). By creating spanned volume, you can merge multiple unallocated spaces of physical disks into one logical volume so as to utilize space resources of multiple disks efficiently.

Striped volume: Striped volume also includes two or more dynamic disks (32 dynamic disks at most). But striped volumes must occupy equal size on every dynamic disk. When users write data into striped volume, data will be divided into data block of 64KB, and then different data block will be written into in each disk in the array. Thus, disk performance and file read efficiency are greatly improved.

Mirrored volume: Mirrored volume includes two dynamic disk spaces with equal size. When we restore data, one space is used to restore working data, and the other stores the data transcript at the same time. Although mirrored volume owns higher fault tolerance, the space utilization rate is 50%.

RAID5: RAID 5 is a striped volume with parity check code. It includes 3 dynamic disks at least, and 32 dynamic disks at most. It is an advanced volume integrating with performance of striped volume and fault tolerance of mirrored volume.

How to use MiniTool Partition Wizard to create spanned volume on Windows Server 2003?
Since plenty of data is stored in server, greater partition space is desired to store important data. However, if one disk can't meet your space requirement, merging multiple disk spaces into one spanned volume is your best choice. How to use MiniTool Partition Wizard to create spanned volume under Windows Server 2003 server operating system?

Firstly, visit its official website https://www.partitionwizard.com/ to download and install this server partition magic. After that, run MiniTool Partition Wizard and see interface below:



This is main interface of MiniTool Partition Wizard. To create spanned volume, please right click dynamic disk used to create spanned volume. And then select "Create Volume" on pop-up menu, the following interface will appear:



Please check "Spanned" on this interface and then click "Next >" to move on.



There are two display lists. The left one shows all dynamic disks on your computer, and the right one is the dynamic disk selected to create spanned volume. In order to select desired dynamic disk, users just need to choose disk on the left display list, and then click "Add >" to display it on right list. After that, click "Next >" to go on:



Set basic properties such as volume label, file system, drive letter, cluster size and volume size for the desired spanned volume. By dragging partition handle, users can easily resize volume. After that, click "Finish" to return to main interface.



Now, users can see new spanned volume on the partition list. However, it's just preview, if you want to realize it, please click "Apply" to perform all your operations.

MiniTool Partition Wizard is powerful and professional server partition magic. It not only can help you create and manage spanned volume, but also help users create and manage any other types of partition on basic disk or volumes on dynamic disk. Go to its official website to download it, and learn more about MiniTool Partition Wizard.