Case Scenario Exercises

Scenario 8.1

One of the users for whom you provide support has two identical hard disks installed in her computer. She says that she has more than enough space on just one drive and has not stored anything on the second drive. The user has read about Windows XP Professional’s support of disk striping and wants you to help her configure these two disks as a striped volume. Both disks are currently configured as basic disks and you know you must upgrade the disks to dynamic disks to support striping. You cannot upgrade one of the disks, however. What might prevent you from upgrading the disk, and how can you resolve the issue?

Scenario 8.2

You have a user who needs to increase the amount of free space available to Windows XP Professional. The current hard disk is a 20 GB drive with 1 GB of available free space and is formatted as FAT32.

You help the user complete the installation of an additional 40 GB hard disk. You configure the basic input/output system (BIOS) to recognize the newly installed drive, and Disk Management recognizes both drives.

The user does not want an additional drive letter assigned to the new hard disk space. She does want to retain the original drive and its contents. How can you configure this computer to meet the user’s needs? What, if any, changes will she notice to the file system? What, if any, are the disadvantages of using volume mount points?