MANIPULATION OF VIRTUAL AND LIVE COMPUTER STORAGE DEVICE PARTITIONS

摘要

The present invention provides tools and techniques for manipulating virtual partitions (608) in a virtual engine environment (206) without necessarily committing each partition (108) manipulation by actually modifying on-disk (106) system structures (108). A virtual engine, virtual partitions (608), virtual drives (602), and other structures in the virtual engine environment (206) permit users to experiment with different partitioning (108) manipulations in a safe and efficient manner. A batch manager (208) manages a resulting list (506) of partition manipulation operations, which may be optimized (512). The batch list may also be executed automatically by conventional partition manipulation engine (210) without requiring additional user input (100) at the end of each list entry (212). The present invention also provides the ability to manipulate extended partitions (804) automatically and provides support for remote partition manipulation through a two part user interface architecture.