What is Logical disk?
A '''logical disk''' is a [[concept]] from computing. Logical disks provide a certain amount of space to store data. Unlike real (called ''physical'') [[hard disk]]s that can be touched, logical disks can take this storage space from different locations. Common locations where this can be taken from: *A [[disk partitioning|disk partition]] on a [[hard disk]] *A [[logical volume management|logical volume]] from a logical volume manager *A combination of hard drives (as in a [[RAID|RAID system]], which contains the physical disks) *A [[storage area network]] *The main memory of a computer (this can be used for temporary files, which can be deleted when the system shuts down) The disk is described as ''logical'' because it does not actually exist as a single physical entity in its own right. ==Why do we need them?== When [[IBM]] first released the magnetic disk drive in the 1956 ([[IBM 305]]) a single drive would be directly attached to the using system, with each disk managed as a single entity. As the development of drives continued, it became apparent that reliability was a problem and systems using [[RAID]] technology evolved. This means that more than one physical disks are ''RAID-ed'' together to produce a single '''logical disk'''. In a modern home [[Personal computer|PC]] environment, disk drives now provide hundreds of [[gigabytes]] of storage capacity which can be impractical to use as a single entity. Therefore most systems have their drives partitioned into multiple ''logical drives''{{Fact|date=November 2007}}. In most modern business [[Information technology|IT]] environments, some form of a [[Storage area network]] will exist. Here, many storage devices are connected to many host [[server (computing)|server]] devices in a network. A single RAID array may provide some capacity to one server, and some capacity to another. Therefore logical disks are used to partition the available capacity and provide the amount of storage needed by each host from a common pool of logical disks. [[Category:Com