Promoting Basic to Dynamic Disks

[rayray]

We have recently set up a W2K Server with a 40gb HD with a single NTSF partition. Yesterday I installed a matching 40gb with the intention creating a mirror set (volume), which I currently do with our other Windows NT4.x server. That's when I found out the Windows 2000 handles mirror sets in a different manner.

I have two hard drives installed on our W2K Server. Disk 0 is the master drive. Disk 1 is the drive installed to hold a mirror of Disk 0. I'm finding out that I must make Disk 0 a Dynamic disk with a Simple volume. Is this correct? At present, Disk 0 is a Basic disk.

1. If I upgrade it to a Dynamic disk, do I lose the data that is installed (it contains boot info and all our data)? The warning I got about not being able to regress to previous versions of Windows has me hesitant, even though W2K is the only O/S installed.

2. If I do promote it to a dynamic disk, will the data be affected when I create the Simple Volume?

3. Do I also need to upgrade Disk 1 to Dynamic and Simple in order to complete the mirror process?..., and if so, do I assign a drive letter and do I also format it?

I'm brand new to to Windows 2000 and don't have any books on this O/S yet. I'd sure appreciate your comments.

 

[AnonGod]

Well, I'm going to say you will have no problem upgrading to the dynamic disk. But if something goes wrong, i'm going to hunt down this post and delete it.

Windows 2000 handles all RAID and other advanced functions with dynamic disks. I have upgraded many a disk with no problems what-so-ever. I would check that your hardware is up-to-date, and on the current hcl, but besides that, all should be well. When you promote to a dynamic disk, all data/partitions/volumes should stay intact.
The warning that comes up about previous OS will come up every time, and if you are only planning to run 2000 on this box, then don't worry about it. It is as simple as NTFS 5 will not work with another (older) OS. All future OS's will be compatable (at least lets hope so).

Any disks you want to do advanced functions, such as mirroring, need to be dynamic. Convert your boot disk as dynamic, then configure your 2nd disk as dynamic. The 2nd disk should not have any volumes on it, just configured as dynamic. Once this is set up, you should have no problem setting up that mirror you want.

Now, again, I say "should". I have never run into any probs, but there is always the FUDD factor.

Good Luck!

[TAG]
anongod@hotmail.com
"Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing."

 

[sibeliusto]

Hi, guys

I recently just configure an Windows 2000 advanced server on IBM server with two hdd. I faced an problem when i upgrade the two HDD to Dynamic Disk, the disk 0 status becoming "Unreachable". So, I'm not able to continue to configure "Mirroring Volume"

I have try to do scan disks, repair, reinstall services pack. but look like useless!

Pls advice!

Cheers!

 

[TechyLike]

MS Document Q267146 mentions a similar problem, not sure if it will help.

http://search.support.microsoft.com