Simple/Dynamic vs Partition/Basic

[maxpower1119]

I have a computer holding six various size PATA hard drives. The last hard drive I added (Seagate 300GB) for whatever reason is set up in Disk Management as Layout:Simple Type: Dynamic. All of my other drives are set up as Layoutartition Type:Basic. I was curious as to what the differences are, and if I migrate these drives to another system, will I have any issue? I googled but became more confused. Thanks.

 

[Happy Hopping]

You want it to be Basic. Not dynamic. There is a misleading command on XP Pro that confuses people.

When a new drive is installed, needless to say, it requires formatting. For whatever, XP Pro defaults to ask you the question of converting to dynamic if you click the Very Long bar under Disk management on the right side of the screen

If you click the small square on the left, it will simply ask you to format the drive and leave it as Basic.

 

[maxpower1119]

I already have this drive loaded with data. Any chance I can convert it?

edit: Google says no. Thanks for the reply.

 

[Bones]

I was curious as to what the differences are, and if I migrate these drives to another system, will I have any issue?

The difference is that the partition data is stored differently, and has a few more pieces of info that are useful for things like software RAID. There is zero benefit for the average desktop user.

If you move a simple dynamic disk to another Windows box, it will see it without any problems. I saw some options in the latest Linux kernel pertaining to Windows dynamic drives, so maybe Linux could see them, too. Haven't tried it, though.

 

[maxpower1119]

Thanks for the info. Not really sure why I set this disk as dynamic, but now I know how to fix it.

 

[Happy Hopping]

just copy the data to another drive, then re-format that drive under basic.

You may very well run into problems w/ dynamic setting on a desktop machine. The truth is, someone explained to me once, but by now, I forgot the reason why. In a nutshell, it has something to do w/ XP misinterpret the data. Because you are talking about your own data on a hard drive, that's what I would do.

 

[DevilDoc]

You don't have to move the files around and reformat the drive. Although, the following will only work if you HAVEN'T chopped the drive up into a bunch of smaller partitions. If that is the case, then you're kinda fucked and have to do it the way ^^^ said.

You can convert it back to a basic disk. DISKPART is your friend

If you screw up your drive, it's your own arse.

Open a command prompt

type "diskpart" [Enter]

Type "help" [Enter] and RTFM

Type "LIST DISK" [Enter]

Diskpart spits out a list of all the hard disks in your system. Should look something like this:

DISKPART> list disk

  Disk ###  Status      Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
  --------  ----------  -------  -------  ---  ---
  Disk 0    Online       138 GB      0 B

There will be asterisks in the Dyn and Gpt columns if the disks are Dynamic or GUID Partition Table.

for grins, type "convert /?" [Enter]

DISKPART> convert /?

Microsoft DiskPart version 5.1.3565

BASIC       - Convert a disk from dynamic to basic.
DYNAMIC     - Convert a disk from basic to dynamic.
GPT         - Convert a disk from MBR to GPT.
MBR         - Convert a disk from GPT to MBR.

This will list the 4 options for conversion: BASIC, DYNAMIC, GPT, MBR.
you've already got one disk with an MBR, don't mess with it.
GPT = GUID Partition Table, which is part of the new Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) Don't mess with GPT or MBR unless you know what you're doing.

Before you can convert a disk, you have to select it.

Remember above where you ran "List Disk"?

The one marked "Dynamic" with a size of approximately 300GB is your target disk.

so type "Select disk X" [Enter] where X is the disk you want to convert to basic

DISKPART> select disk X

Disk X is now the selected disk.

DISKPART>

Now type "Convert Basic" [Enter]

Sorry - I don't have any exampls of how this works, I don't have any disks I want to convert to basic right now...

Any questions about Diskpart, just ask. Or look it up at Microsoft Technet.

 

[Happy Hopping]

I recommend doing the above AFTER that drive has been back up, as personally, I have no faith in MS disk utilities at all. It's like the good old NT Software mirror, it does nothing, error on disk all over the place, in the end, only hardware mirror can be done.

 

[TripleNinja]

DISKPART requires you have an empty disk before to convert it to basic. I moved all my content to other hard drive and I delete the whole drive but DISKPART still complaints for an empty disk. :-(