LDMDump

Windows 2000 introduces a new type of disk partitioning scheme that is managed by a component called the Logical Disk Manager (LDM). Basic disks implement standard DOS-style partition tables, whereas Dynamic disks use LDM partitioning. LDM partitioning offers several advantages over DOS partitioing including replication across disks, on-disk storage of advanced volume configuration (spanned volume, mirrored volumes, striped volumes and RAID-5 volumes). My March/April two-part series on Windows NT/2000 storage management in Windows 2000 Magazine describes the Details of each partitioning scheme. Other than the Disk Management MMC-snapin and a tool called dmdiag in the Windows 2000 Resource Kit, there are no tools for investigating the internals of the LDM on-disk database that describes a system`s partitioning layout. LDMDump is a utility that lets you examine exactly what is stored in a disk`s copy of the system LDM database. LDMDump shows you the contents of the LDM database private header, table-of-contents, and object database (where partition, component and volume definitions are stored), and then summarizes its finding with partition table and volume listings.