Concatenation
In Storage Management, concatenation is storing data on either a physical disk or on disk space that spans multiple physical disks. When you span more than one disk, concatenation enables the operating system to view multiple physical disks as a single disk. Data that are stored on a single disk can be considered a simple volume. This disk could also be defined as a virtual disk that consists of only a single physical disk.
Data that spans more than one physical disk can be considered a spanned volume. Multiple concatenated disks can also be defined as a virtual disk that consists of more than one physical disk.
A dynamic volume that spans to separate areas of the same disk is also considered concatenated.
When a physical disk in a concatenated or spanned volume fails, the entire volume becomes unavailable. Because the data is not redundant, it cannot be restored by rebuilding from a mirrored disk or parity information. Restoring from a backup is the only option.
Because concatenated volumes do not use disk space to maintain redundant data, they are more cost-efficient than volumes that use mirrors or parity information. A concatenated volume may be a good choice for data that is temporary, reproduced, or that does not justify the cost of data redundancy. In addition, a concatenated volume can be expanded by adding an additional physical disk.

- Concatenates n disks as one large virtual disk with a capacity of n disks.
- Data fills up the first disk before it is written to the second disk.
- No redundant data is stored. When a disk fails, the large virtual disk fails.
- No performance gain.
- No redundancy.