Which method for creating linux volumes is similar to using dynamic disks in windows?

1.3.3.1 Creating a bootable USB drive using Windows 7 or Vista

This method will work to create a bootable Windows-based USB drive. As part of this, the USB drive will be formatted using NTFS. The steps described below are a step-by-step process on how to accomplish this task. Perform the following actions on an existing Windows 7- or Vista-based machine.

Warning

Issuing the wrong commands when creating bootable USB drives can format your hard disk, so be careful.

Open a Command Prompt using Administrative privileges.

Run the command diskpart.

Enter the command list disk to determine which disk is your USB drive.

Use the command select disk X where X is replaced with the number of the disk used by your USB drive.

Enter the command clean to wipe the drive.

Enter the command create partition primary to create a new primary partition on the USB drive.

Enter the command select partition 1 to select the newly created partition.

Enter the command active to mark the new partition as active.

Enter the command format fs=ntfs to format the drive.

Enter the commands assign and exit to complete the formatting process.

Insert your Windows 7 DVD, change to the DVD drive in your command window, then change into the “boot” directory.

Run the command bootsect.exe /nt60 X: where X: is the drive letter assigned to your USB drive.

Uncovering Hidden Partitions

As we said earlier, there is no way to hide the partition completely from the Computer Management console (except HPA and DCO partitions as we will see later). You can always check for hidden partitions of any plugged USB device through this console.

Another method is by using the DiskPart command line utility that comes as a part of the Microsoft Windows® family (Windows® 8, 8.1, 7, Vista, XP, and Server 2003). DiskPart is a text-mode command interpreter. This tool enables you to manage objects (disks, partitions, or volumes) by using scripts or direct input at a command prompt.

To launch this tool, open a DOS prompt, type DiskPart, and press Enter. The DiskPart utility will appear in a separate window (see Fig. 4.61).

In Fig. 4.61 we typed List disk to view a list of connected hard disks to this PC and associated numbers (in my case I have one hard disk and two attached USB zip drives). In order to view the partition of each disk you first need to select it through the select disk  =  n command, where n points to the disk number that appears in the first command.

After selecting the disk, type list partition to see list of partitions that exist within this disk; here the hidden partition of our USB zip drive (Partition 0–1147 MB) appears.

DiskPart is a powerful tool for disk management under Windows® OS. You can learn more and see a list of command line options for this tool in the link ginen in Ref. [21].

You can restore your USB zip drive to its original state by plugging it into your PC. Go to Device Manager, right-click it, and select Properties. Go to the Driver tab and select Roll Back Driver. This will uninstall the software driver you already installed and return the old driver to this drive.

Another method to restore your old USB zip drive driver software is by using a free tool called SD Formatter [22]. Use this tool to format your USB drive and it should returns to its original state before partitioning it.

Configuring a New Disk

In this section, we will configure and manage a new disk under Windows Vista. We will initialize the disk, create volumes, choose the file system for each volume, and even demonstrate how to shrink a volume. We’ll start by partitioning a new drive after it has been installed.

In our example (as shown in Figure 4.6), when we first installed our new drive, we decided to use the MBR partition style. After selecting the partition style, you then decide if you want to use a basic disk or dynamic disk. As you know already, we converted a basic disk to a dynamic disk using the diskpart command. Now we need to create a volume on our new drive. In disk management, we must right-click the area of the new drive labeled as unallocated (shown in Figure 4.7). As you can see, the only option we have is to create a new simple volume. Remember, the reason for this is because we only have one disk we are creating this dynamic volume for.

Now Windows Vista will run through a new simple volume wizard (as shown in Figure 4.8). At the New Simple Wizard initial screen, click Next.

Next you are asked to specify the volume size. In our example, we will only choose 4GB (see Figure 4.9). After you have specified the volume size, click Next.

Now we assign the drive letter E to our newly created simple volume (see Figure 4.10). After doing so, click Next.

Now we come to the part regarding what file system we want to format this volume with. We will cover file systems in the next section, but as you can see in Figure 4.11, we have the choice of FAT, FAT32, and NTFS. Select NTFS and change the volume label to read Simple Volume. Keep the Allocation unit size as the default. After selecting NTFS, change the volume label and click Next.

We now come to the last screen in creating our simple volume. The Simple Volume Wizard provides us with a list of the settings we’ve chosen (see Figure 4.12). Since we know these are the settings we want, click Finish. If by chance you saw a setting you didn’t mean to select, just click the Back button to the point where you made your mistake and make the correction there.

Once formatting of the new volume is complete, you should see the new simple volume listed in disk management, as shown in Figure 4.13.

Something new in Windows Vista is the ability to shrink a volume without the use of third-party software. Shrinking a volume allows administrators to easily repartition drives without having to completely remove and re-create them. To shrink a volume, go to Computer Management | Storage | Disk Management. Select the volume you intend to shrink and right-click it. You’ll see the option Shrink Volume, as shown in Figure 4.14.

When you select Shrink Volume, Windows Vista will query the volume for available shrink space. Next, you will see the screen to choose what size you want to shrink the volume to. In our example, we have chosen to shrink it to 1.95GB, but it will appear as 2.05GB, as shown in Figure 4.15. Click the Shrink button.

After Windows Vista has shrunk the volume, it will appear as shown in Figure 4.16. Our volume labeled Simple Volume is now 2.05GB, and the amount of unallocated space is up to 7.95GB.

Bootable USB Drives

In general, building a bootable USB drive is similar to creating a bootable CD or DVD. In both cases, the appropriate files and data structures must be copied to the media being used. Also, the disk must be made bootable. When burning an ISO image to an optical disk, this has frequently already been done and the boot record will be created when the image is written. This process is not automatic for USB drives and needs to be manually performed.

A number of methods exist for doing this ranging from creating a boot sector on the USB drive from Windows to creating a multiboot menu-driven system by using a variety of utilities. For our purposes, we’ll go through two examples: one for Windows and one for Linux.