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By: Daniel Petri

What's the difference between Basic andDynamic Disks in Windows XP/2000/2003?

Microsoft Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003 offer two typesof disk storage: basic and dynamic.

Basic Disk Storage

Basic storage uses normal partition tables supported by MS-DOS, MicrosoftWindows 95, Microsoft Windows 98, Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Me),Microsoft Windows NT, Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003 andWindows XP. A disk initialized for basic storage is called a basic disk. A basic diskcontains basic volumes, such as primary partitions, extended partitions, andlogical drives. Additionally, basic volumes include multidisk volumes that arecreated by using Windows NT 4.0 or earlier, such as volume sets, stripe sets,mirror sets, and stripe sets with parity. Windows XP does not support thesemultidisk basic volumes. Any volume sets, stripe sets, mirror sets, or stripe setswith parity must be backed up and deleted or converted to dynamic disks beforeyou install Windows XP Professional.

Dynamic Disk Storage

Dynamic storage is supported in Windows XP Professional, Windows 2000 andWindows Server 2003. A disk initialized for dynamic storage is called a dynamicdisk. A dynamic disk contains dynamic volumes, such as simple volumes,spanned volumes, striped volumes, mirrored volumes, and RAID-5 volumes. Withdynamic storage, you can perform disk and volume management without theneed to restart Windows.Note: Dynamic disks are not supported on portable computers or on Windows XPHome Edition-based computers.You cannot create mirrored volumes or RAID-5 volumes on Windows XP HomeEdition, Windows XP Professional, or Windows XP 64-Bit Edition-basedcomputers. However, you can use a Windows XP Professional-based computer tocreate a mirrored or RAID-5 volume on remote computers that are runningWindows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Advanced Server, or Windows 2000Datacenter Server, or the Standard, Enterprise and Data Center versions of Windows Server 2003.Storage types are separate from the file system type. A basic or dynamic disk cancontain any combination of FAT16, FAT32, or NTFS partitions or volumes.

A disk system can contain any combination of storage types. However, allvolumes on the same disk must use the same storage type.

To convert a Basic Disk to a Dynamic Disk:

Use the Disk Management snap-in in Windows XP/2000/2003 to convert a basicdisk to a dynamic disk. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Log on as Administrator or as a member of the Administrators group.

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2. Click Start, and then click Control Panel.3. Click Performance and Maintenance, click Administrative Tools, and then

double-click Computer Management. You can also right-click My Computerand choose Manage if you have My Computer displayed on your desktop.

4. In the left pane, click Disk Management.5. In the lower-right pane, right-click the basic disk that you want to convert,

and then click Convert to Dynamic Disk. You must right-click the gray areathat contains the disk title on the left side of the Details pane.

6. Select the check box that is next to the disk that you want to convert (if itis not already selected), and then click OK.

7. Click Details if you want to view the list of volumes in the disk. ClickConvert.

8. Click Yes when you are prompted to convert the disk, and then click OK.

Warning: After you convert a basic disk to a dynamic disk, local access to thedynamic disk is limited to Windows XP Professional, Windows 2000 and WindowsServer 2003. Additionally, after you convert a basic disk to a dynamic disk, thedynamic volumes cannot be changed back to partitions. You must first delete alldynamic volumes on the disk and then convert the dynamic disk back to a basicdisk. If you want to keep your data, you must first back up the data or move it toanother volume.

Dynamic Storage TermsA volume is a storage unit made from free space on one or more disks. It can beformatted with a file system and assigned a drive letter. Volumes on dynamicdisks can have any of the following layouts: simple, spanned, mirrored, striped,or RAID-5.A simple volume uses free space from a single disk. It can be a single region ona disk or consist of multiple, concatenated regions. A simple volume can beextended within the same disk or onto additional disks. If a simple volume is

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extended across multiple disks, it becomes a spanned volume.A spanned volume is created from free disk space that is linked together frommultiple disks. You can extend a spanned volume onto a maximum of 32 disks. Aspanned volume cannot be mirrored and is not fault-tolerant.A striped volume is a volume whose data is interleaved across two or morephysical disks. The data on this type of volume is allocated alternately and evenly

to each of the physical disks. A striped volume cannot be mirrored or extendedand is not fault-tolerant. Striping is also known as RAID-0.A mirrored volume is a fault-tolerant volume whose data is duplicated on twophysical disks. All of the data on one volume is copied to another disk to providedata redundancy. If one of the disks fails, the data can still be accessed from theremaining disk. A mirrored volume cannot be extended. Mirroring is also knownas RAID-1.A RAID-5 volume is a fault-tolerant volume whose data is striped across anarray of three or more disks. Parity (a calculated value that can be used toreconstruct data after a failure) is also striped across the disk array. If a physicaldisk fails, the portion of the RAID-5 volume that was on that failed disk can bere-created from the remaining data and the parity. A RAID-5 volume cannot bemirrored or extended.The system volume contains the hardware-specific files that are needed to loadWindows (for example, Ntldr, Boot.ini, and Ntdetect.com). The system volumecan be, but does not have to be, the same as the boot volume.The boot volume contains the Windows operating system files that are locatedin the %Systemroot% and %Systemroot%\System32 folders. The boot volumecan