Description:
Hardware devices, particularly hard disk drives, are peculiar creatures in the Windows world. Although stunning advances in capability have taken place in recent years, the requirements of backward compatibility dictate that modern devices be similar in many ways to products sold 5 (or even 15) years ago. Windows 2000 Hardware and Disk Management is about the intersection of Microsoft's latest operating systems and various hardware specifications. It's a valuable resource for system administrators, system integrators, and power users interested in getting the most from the disk subsystem and other hardware interfaces of Windows 2000 Professional and Windows 2000 Server. Coverage of hardware devices other than hard disks isn't deep--there's one paragraph dedicated to resolving this common problem: "The printer does not print." Indeed, this book would be better if it included explicit coverage of how Windows 2000 interacts, for example, with SCSI drives ("SCSI" isn't even in the index). Still, this book earns its keep by detailing how to use Windows 2000's disk-administration tools--it sticks to the software level. You'll find clear guidance on how to establish and discontinue drive mirroring, for example, and how to set up a safety net based on RAID-5 volumes. There's also a brief but worthwhile introduction to the process of creating and maintaining a storage scheme based on the distributed file system (DFS). --David Wall Topics covered: The hardware-management tools that ship with Windows 2000 Professional and Windows 2000 Server. Modems, network cards, printers, and multimedia devices all get their moments in the sun, but hard disks represent the main event. There's coverage of dynamic disks, dynamic volumes, the distributed file system (DFS), RAID-5 support, and plenty of administration and management tools.
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