Server hard disks and other storage devices (such as tape drives and CD-ROM drives) are all managed by the NetWare® operating system.
Hard disks are divided into partitions, including one DOS partition and at least one NetWare partition per server. A hard disk can also contain other partitions, such as a UNIX partition. For general information about disk partitions, see Partitioning Disks and Logical Partitions.
All storage devices and individual disk partitions are identified by numbers assigned by the NetWare operating system's Media Manager. The same number represents the same device in all NetWare utilities or console commands. For an explanation of the device numbering system, see Device and Partition Numbering.
All storage devices require drivers. The NetWare Peripheral Storage ArchitectureTM (NWPA) divides device drivers into two kinds: a custom device module (CDM) that drives the device itself and a host adapter module (HAM) that drives the adapter to which the device is attached. For more information, see Drivers for Host Adapters and Storage Devices.
To increase data fault tolerance, partitions on one disk can be mirrored to partitions on other disks. For information about mirroring, see Mirroring and Duplexing. NetWare also includes a feature called Hot FixTM that redirects any information stored on corrupted blocks to uncorrupted disk blocks. See Redirecting Bad Blocks.