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Spanned volume
A volume that consists of disk space from two or more dynamic disks (p. 84), in portions that do not
need to be equally-sized.
A spanned volume can reside on up to 32 disks.
Unlike mirrored (p. 89) and RAID-5 volumes, spanned volumes are not fault-tolerant. Unlike striped
volumes (p. 91), spanned volumes do not provide faster data access.
Stripe
Each of the several equally-sized portions of disk space that make up a striped volume (p. 91) or a
RAID-5 volume.
Each stripe occupies a separate hard disk.
A striped volume consists of two or more stripes. A RAID-5 volume consists of three or more stripes.
Striped volume
A volume that resides on two or more dynamic disks and whose data is evenly distributed across
equally-sized portions of disk space (called stripes) on those disks.
Access to data on striped volumes is usually faster than on other types of dynamic volumes, because
it can be performed simultaneously on multiple hard disks.
Unlike a mirrored volume (p. 89), a striped volume does not contain redundant information, so it is
not fault-tolerant.
A striped volume is also known as a RAID-0 volume.
Swap file
A file (p. 85) that is used by an operating system to store data that does not fit in the physical
memory of the machine.
Use of the swap files enables more programs to run than would otherwise be allowed by the memory
limitations. The operating system unloads currently unneeded data to the swap file, and loads
needed data from the swap file into memory.
A swap file is also called a paging file.
System folder
A folder that contains files that are necessary for an operating system to work.
Examples of system folders for Windows operating systems are “Program Files” and “Windows”.
System volume
The volume which contains files that are necessary for any of the installed Windows operating
systems to start.
Examples of such files are: Boot.ini, Ntdetect.com, and Ntldr
