Disk access on Windows

On Windows™, both raw disks and NTFS use kernel asynchronous I/O (KAIO). The Windows file system manager adds additional overhead to disk I/O, so using raw disks provides slight performance advantages. Because NTFS files are a more standard method of storing data, you must use NTFS files instead of raw disks. Consider using raw disks if your database server requires a large amount of disk access.

Raw disk space on Windows

On Windows, raw disk space can be either a physical drive without a drive letter or a logical disk partition that has been assigned a drive letter using the Disk Administrator. The space can either be formatted or unformatted. If it contains data, the data is overwritten after the space has been allocated to the database server. For more information, see Allocating raw disk space on Windows.

NTFS files

You must use NTFS files, not FAT files, for disk space on Windows. For more information, see Allocating NTFS file space on Windows.