University of Rhode Island DigitalCommons@URI Open Access Master's Theses 2012 Mounting a Windows Software Raid as a Virtual Disk Daniel N. Ducharme University of Rhode Island Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/theses Recommended Citation Ducharme, Daniel N., "Mounting a Windows Software Raid as a Virtual Disk" (2012). Open Access Master's Theses. Paper 1036. https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/theses/1036 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@URI. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Access Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@URI. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. MOUNTING A WINDOWS SOFTWARE RAID AS A VIRTUAL DISK BY DANIEL N. DUCHARME A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SCIENCE IN COMPUTER SCIENCE UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND 2012 MASTER OF SCIENCE THESIS OF DANIEL N. DUCHARME APPROVED: Thesis Committee: Major Professor Dr. Victor Fay-Wolfe Dr. Gerard Baudet Dr. Qing Yang Nasser H. Zawia DEAN OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND 2012 ABSTRACT When an investigator attempts to bring a write blocked Windows dynamic disk online, Windows will refuse to mount it. This forces investigators to use the few tools that have built-in support for dealing with the RAID or to image the partition, and then mount the image. While imaging did not use to be an issue, with the rising sizes of disks available at low cost, it is becoming prohibitively expensive to image every software RAID. The solution is to mount the RAID through the use of a driver as a virtual disk.