LDMDump - Sysinternals | Microsoft Learn

Title: LDMDump v1.02 — Summary

Author: Mark Russinovich Published: November 1, 2006 Download: https://download.sysinternals.com/files/LdmDump.zip (43 KB)

Summary:

• Purpose: LDMDump is a utility that examines the on-disk Logical Disk Manager (LDM) database used by Windows dynamic disks. It reveals the private header, table-of-contents, and object database where partition, component, and volume definitions are stored, and provides summarized partition table and volume listings.

• Context: Windows 2000 introduced LDM-based dynamic disks (as opposed to basic DOS-style partition tables). LDM supports spanned, mirrored, striped and RAID-5 volumes and stores advanced volume configuration on disk. Prior to LDMDump, only Disk Management MMC and dmdiag (Resource Kit) provided limited insight into LDM internals.

• How it works: There are no published APIs or documentation for the LDM on-disk format. LDMDump was created by analyzing LDM database contents across systems and conditions to interpret the undocumented format.

• Usage: Run ldmdump with a disk identifier:

  • Usage: ldmdump [-?] [-d#]

  • -? shows supported options and units.

  • -d# specifies the disk number to examine (for example, ldmdump /d0 inspects disk 0).

• Requirements: Runs on client — Windows Vista and higher; server — Windows Server 2008 and higher.

• Further reading: “Inside Storage Management, Part 2” by Mark Russinovich (Windows 2000 Magazine, April 2000) for more on LDM on-disk structure.

• Additional: A related Microsoft training module is linked: Maintain disks and volumes — https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/training/modules/maintain-disks-volumes/?source=recommendations

Last updated on the Microsoft page: 03/23/2021.