What is Dynamic Disk?

[Ovatvvon]

In the "Computer Management" program under the "Disk Management" section you can manage your system's disks. One option you have if you right-click on a tab (i.e. Disk 0, Disk 1) on the left side is to "Upgrade to Dynamic Disk".

What is that...what does it do...or why would one want to do that? -Ovatvvon :-Q

 

[amorielljr]

It's a different partitioning structure than your normal basic disk. It also gives Windows 2000 some enhanced functionality when dealing with partitioning your disk and RAID options. The only down side is once you've change to a Dynamic Disk you cannot change back to a basic disk and the disk is not viewable from a basic disk.

 

[Ovatvvon]

Could you give some examples of enhanced functionality when dealing with partitioning your disk and RAID options?

Right now I have 3 IDE disks as this is a learning / development server. one 20GB, one 30GB and one 60GB. I have 3 partitions on the 60GB alone. I'm running multiple OS's which is why I have such a weird setup. If I made the 60GB disk into a dynamic drive, what other options would I gain. You said a draw back is that you can't go back to a basic disk...I'm assuming that is until you reformat the drive? And if it's giving you more options, why would you want to go back to the basic disk then?

Thanks for taking the time to explain this!

-Ovatvvon :-Q

 

[SuperJon]

I guess the question you need asked here is do you want fault tolerance on your HD's. If you do then A dynamic disk array will help you.



SuperJ - Braindump Specialist
MCSE NT4 MCSA 2000/XP CCNA CCDA

 

[Ovatvvon]

Will that work with seperate IDE drives of different sizes?

-Ovatvvon :-Q

 

[chilleds]

Should do. But the target disk (the 2nd your backing up to) can't be smaller than the main data disk, obviously!

 

[Ovatvvon]

Ok, cool.

Thanks for the info!!!

-Ovatvvon :-Q

 

[OzDog]

A dynamic disk CAN be converted to a Basic disk, but you need to remove ALL volumes from it first (ie delete all data). So amorielljr was right, sort of, because with data on there, you can't convert it.

The only advantage of Dynamic is that you can enable the software fault tolerance features of Win2K.

The other disadvantage of Dynamic disks is that other OS's can't read the data on it. If you are sharing the system with Linux (just a guess, that's what I do) it can't read Dynamic disks. It allows you to mount it, but it mounts the disk wrong, as Win2K partition's it strangely.

Windows 2000 can't even read the Dynamic disk from another system until you "Import" the drive. Don't ask why.

Cheers,
Sam

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