Support for removable media

Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP2

Support for removable media

In the Graphical View in Disk Management, removable media devices are labeled Removable.

Most removable media devices, such as Zip and Jaz drives and optical discs (for example, DVD-RAM), already have a primary partition equal to the total size of the media. If the removable media has a primary partition, you cannot mark the partition as active or delete it. You cannot create extended partitions, logical drives, or dynamic volumes on removable media devices.

In addition, you cannot use the GUID partition table (GPT) partitioning style on removable media.

Important

• For better interoperability in storage area network (SAN) environments, on Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition and Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition, volumes on new basic disks are not automatically mounted and assigned drive letters by default when added to the system. You must manually mount basic volumes and assign the drive letters using Disk Management or the DiskPart and mountvol commands. Dynamic disks, removable media devices (such as Zip or Jaz drives), and optical discs (such as CD-ROM or DVD-RAM) are always automatically mounted by the system when they are detected.

For information about the other types of storage you can use with Disk Management, see Using Disk Management.