VDS returns the following when you select a partition format that it does not recognize:

C:\> Diskpart

DISKPART> list disk
DISKPART> select disk (id)
DISKPART> list part
DISKPART> select part (id)

Virtual Disk Service error:
The pack is not online.

The pack is not online error (VDS_E_PACK_OFFLINE 0x80042444L) is returned when Diskpart attempts to get the file system properties on, say, an ext3 or hfs+ file system. Diskpart works only with Fat and Ntfs file systems. If the goal is to delete the non-Microsoft partition, use the clean command.

DISKPART> list disk
DISKPART> select disk (id)

DISKPART> clean

Double-Take Software Expands Infrastructure Software Solutions with Network Boot Technology and Software-Based iSCSI SAN.
http://www.doubletake.com/english/news-events/pressreleases/full-story/pages/default.aspx?NewsID=33&SiteType=Global

"Our company's top priority is delivering IT services in a flexible and agile fashion, whether it's shifting services from one site to another, from one computer to another, or even from one computer to a virtual machine," said J. Wolfgang Goerlich, network operations and security manager.

"Double-Take Software's netBoot/i plays an important role in achieving this vision by enabling us to seamlessly move servers between iSCSI and FC, lower and higher capacity hardware, and between physical and virtual machines; the result is a smooth transition between various equipment tiers."

Baseline has an article on Best Practices in Disaster Recovery, Business Continuity Planning. "... disaster recovery priorities depend on the nature of the system. 'We take snapshots ranging from every hour to every 15 minutes, depending on our systems,' says Wolfgang Goerlich, network operations and security manager for the Birmingham, Mich.-based investment banking firm. 'Our top-tier systems, such as trading, can have an issue if we lose even 15 minutes. Lower-tier systems, such as research, just generate reports once a day, so if they lose data for [a few] hours, it isn’t as big of an issue. With our lowest-tier systems, our DR plan is to go out and buy boxes and bring them up in a couple of weeks.'"

"The key thing for us was a very short recovery-time objective,' says Goerlich. The firm uses Compellent’s virtual storage arrays, with the DR baked in. He says it takes just one click to activate DR and boot up the systems on a new box."

The article in CIO magazine, How Microsoft Hyper-V Helped My IT Shop Revamp Disaster Recovery, details my efforts to reorganize network and recovery operations around storage and server virtualization. It also mentions the year-long virtualization study that I did in 2007/2008.

My top priority is delivering IT services in a flexible and agile fashion. This means shifting services from one site to another, from one computer to another, or even from one computer to a virtual machine. WinBoot/I plays an important role in achieving this vision.

The services' performance and business value dictate the hardware resources we commit. WinBoot/I then enables us to seamlessly move servers between iSCSI and FC, or between lower and higher capacity server hardware. WinBoot/I also enables seamless moves between physical hardware and virtual machines. At Munder, we put this flexibility to use in our disaster recovery planning for smooth transitions between production and recovery equipment.

WinBoot/I, in conjunction with our SAN, maximizes the value of my hardware investments. Check them out.

CMRR has released Secure Erase for hard drives.

From the readme:

"HDDerase.exe is a DOS-based utility that securely erases "sanitizes" all data on ATA hard disk drives in Intel architecture computers (PCs).  It offers the option to run the drive internal secure erase command, security erase unit, based on the ATA specification by the T13 technical committee.  To run the utility make a floppy, recordable CD-R, or USB DOS bootable disk; then copy HDDerase.exe to the bootable media.  Reboot the computer with the floppy, CD-R, or USB inserted, and type "hdderase" at the system DOS prompt.  Make sure to set the correct priority boot order in the system BIOS, such as first boot floppy, CD-R, or USB depending on which media is used to run HDDerase.exe.  HDDerase.exe must be run from an actual DOS environment and not a Window based DOS command prompt environment."

I will be out at the Storage Networking World Conference on April 7 thru 10. On Tuesday, I am holding a session in the Business Continuity/Data Protection track. The topic is Simplifying Business Continuity Planning using OS and Storage Virtualization. Hope to see you there.

I have had the luck to work on a number of data storage projects. I have designed, tested, and re-architected San and Nas deployments. (That is, Storage Area Networks and Network Attached Storage.) Raid is always a component of these.

At my current position, we have a Compellent San (www.compellent.com). The Compellent offers tiered virtual storage.

The way this works is that there are actual Raid devices at various levels (Raid1, Raid5, Raid10). The volumes or virtual hard drives are assigned a Raid level. These virtual volumes are then carved out of the physical Raid devices. You can tier the volume so that frequently accessed data and rarely accessed data are at different Raid levels.

This allows different blocks on a server’s volume to be at Raid5 or Raid10. Why would you want to do this? Well, Raid10 is fast but takes up twice as much raw disk space. Thus you put the speed sensitive storage blocks on Raid10 and the rest on Raid5, maximizing your disk investment.

The Compellents are very cool technology. It came out in 2004, and now the idea has spread to other vendors. Still, they were the first and are our preferred vendor.