Physical Disk resource type

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

Physical Disk resource type

You use the Physical Disk resource type to manage disks that are on a cluster storage device.

You can assign drive letters to the disks that are on a cluster storage device or create mounted drives. If you assign drive letters, the disks must have the same drive letters on all cluster nodes.

To prevent data corruption, it is important that only one node at a time use a cluster disk. Normally, the Cluster service prevents more than one node from using a disk at the same time. However, there are two circumstances in which the ordinary cluster safeguards do not work: when you install a new disk, and when you remove a disk from control by the cluster.

For information on replacing disks in a server cluster, see Updated technical information and article Q305793, "How to Replace a Disk with Windows 2000 or Windows Server 2003 family Clusters" in the Microsoft Knowledge Base.