Horizon Composer persistent disks are used to store user profile data and enable it to persist during the Horizon Composer maintenance tasks described in this chapter. A linked clone is not required to have a persistent disk; features such as user profile folder redirection and User Environment Manager enable a linked clone desktop to appear to be persistent, even if it lacks a persistent disk.
Organizations that rely on Horizon Composer persistent disks to store critical user data should be familiar with how to manage them using the native features of Horizon. This section will provide examples of the different Horizon maintenance operations that involve Horizon Composer persistent disks.
Persistent disks will work only with the operating system version with which they were deployed. In the event that the original operating system is unavailable, and when the data on the disk must be accessed nonetheless, the persistent disks will need to be manually attached to a new virtual desktop and assigned a Windows drive letter. When attached this way, the persistent disks will simply appear as another hard drive.