JSI Tip 3082. How can I decipher disk numbering when I have very complex fault-tolerant sets?

When you upgrade from basic to dynamic disk, you can create mirrors, stripe sets, extended volumes, spanned volumes, and RAID-5 volumes.

The dynamic disk volume information is stored in a private database at the end of the disk. Disks are numbered during the upgrade from basic to dynamic, which can cause them to be numbered quite differently from the numbering that appears in Disk Management.

Example

Disk Management may display:

Disk 0 
Disk 1 
Disk 2 
Disk 3

If you first upgrade disk 2 to dynamic and then upgrade disk 3, the dynamic disk database would contain:

Harddisk2 Disk1 
Harddisk3 Disk2

You can use the DmDiag Query command to display:

Disk group: <MachineName>Dg0

DG NAME         NCONFIG      NLOG     MINORS   GROUP-ID
DM NAME         DEVICE       TYPE     PRIVLEN  PUBLEN   STATE
V  NAME         USETYPE      KSTATE   STATE    LENGTH   READPOL   PREFPLEX
PL NAME         VOLUME       KSTATE   STATE    LENGTH   LAYOUT    NCOL/WID MODE
SD NAME         PLEX         DISK     DISKOFFS LENGTH   \[COL/\]OFF DEVICE   MODE

dg <MachineName>Dg0 all       default  0        14ad79a0-b48c-11d2-b461-00c04f8eec37

dm Disk1        Harddisk2    ntdisk   2048     17767827 -
dm Disk2        Harddisk3    ntdisk   2048     17767826 -

v  Volume1      gen          ENABLED  ACTIVE   8388608  SELECT    -
pl Volume1-01   Volume1      ENABLED  ACTIVE   8388608  CONCAT    -        RW
sd Disk1-01     Volume1-01   Disk1    0        8388608  0         Harddisk2 ENA

v  Volume2      gen          ENABLED  ACTIVE   4194304  SELECT    -
pl Volume2-01   Volume2      ENABLED  ACTIVE   4194304  CONCAT    -        RW
sd Disk1-02     Volume2-01   Disk1    8388608  4194304  0         Harddisk2 ENA

v  Volume3      gen          ENABLED  ACTIVE   4194304  SELECT    -
pl Volume3-01   Volume3      ENABLED  ACTIVE   4194304  CONCAT    -        RW
sd Disk2-01     Volume3-01   Disk2    0        4194304  0         Harddisk3 ENA

v  Volume4      gen          ENABLED  ACTIVE   4194304  SELECT    -
pl Volume4-01   Volume4      ENABLED  ACTIVE   4194304  CONCAT    -        RW
sd Disk2-02     Volume4-01   Disk2    4194304  4194304  0         Harddisk3  ENA

NOTE: The lines that start with dm diskn denote the dynamic disk private numbers that match the Disk Management snap-in.