You should understand the following distinctions between logical or database devices and physical devices:
The physical disk or physical device is the actual hardware that stores the data.
A database device or logical device is a piece of a physical disk that has been initialized (with the disk init command) for use by Adaptive Server. A database device can be an operating system file, an entire disk, or a disk partition.
See the Adaptive Server installation and configuration guides for information about specific operating system constraints on disk and file usage.
A segment is a named collection of database devices used by a database. The database devices that make up a segment can be located on separate physical devices.
A partition is block of storage for a table. Partitioning a table splits it so that multiple tasks can access it simultaneously. When partitioned tables are placed on segments with a matching number of devices, each partition starts on a separate database device.
Use sp_helpdevice to get information about devices, sp_helpsegment to get information about segments, and sp_helpartition to get information about partitions.
