LDMDump1.02

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 allows you to view 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.To use LDMDump simply pass it the identifier of a disk.usage: ldmdump [-?] [-d#]-?Displays the supported options and the units of measurement used for output values.-d#Specifies the number of the disk for LDMDump to examine. For example, "ldmdump /d0" has LDMDump show the LDM database information stored on disk 0.There are no published APIs available for obtiaining detailed information about a disk's LDM partitioning, and the LDM database format is completely undocumented. LDMDump was developed based on study of LDM database contents on a variety of different systems and under changing conditions.