? Dynamic disk: Win2kpro ?

[OuTpaTienT]

Can someone please explain to me exactly what a "dynamic disk" is (using Win2k).

I just got an 80GB hard drive and was about to do the "old fashion" procedure that I'm so familiar with of doing an Fdisk and partitioning then formatting each partition before I could even think of doing anything with the HD. But instead I decided to plug it in and see what Win2k can do with it. It told me the disk needed formatting and gave me the option of FAT32 or NTFS of which I went with NTFS. So now I have a huge "dynamic disk". What is that, exactly?

Is a dynamic disk any different than a normal NTFS formatted disk?

Could I make it active and boot from it if needed?

Could I wipe it and do a clean OS install to it? (as I begrudgingly move away from FAT disks.)

[Hoods]

Before you put anything on the drive , right click on that drive in disk manager and you can convert it back to basic.
Dynamic drives are used for software raid and some say its even good for hardware raid.
It can also be used for jbod, or makeing one big disk out of all your drives.
Yes you can boot from it.
Enjoy the new drive,
Hoods

[DVNT1]

There are a fair number of differences.

1) yes
2) basic disk partitions that you convert to simple volumes on dynamic disks must retain their partition table entries in the MBR so that Win2K can boot from the volume or install to it. (Win2K Setup lets you perform installations only to dynamic disks that include the system or boot volume.) Expanding the simple volume would disable the ability to boot from or install to the volume.


a relating link with detaiil info: http://www.winnetmag.com/Articles/In...ArticleID=8688

[OuTpaTienT]

Thanks for that link DVNT1.

So it seems to me that I shouldn't convert it back to basic as Dynamic disks are more fault tolerance.

hmmm, I dunno. I'm still slightly confused.

[nukes]

A simple volume on a dynamic disk will not provide ANY fault tolerance, it only comes in when you are using more than one disk.

[Stan]

Hi OuTpaTienT!

One good thing about dynamic disks is that you can resize them on-the-fly without any reboot.

Remember that only Windows 2000 (and XP) computers can directly access dynamic disks (no problem over network shares of course )

There is also some problems if you dual-boot between 2 Win2000 installs (or one 2000 and one XP).
Apparently, this has to do with the fact the dynamic disks are associated with disk groups (disks managed as a collaction). This info is stored in a 1MB region at the end of each dynamic disks. So I guess that if 2 Win2000 install access the same disk group, it might causes some "confusion"...

Like I said, I've never tested it and I can't remember where I read this info...

Stan

[SickPup404]

One big plus about resizing on-the-fly: Let's say you run out of space. Just drop another HDD in your PC, set it up as dynamic, then add it to your existing basic disk and you now have a drive on JBOD. I think you can also use dynamic disks to mount to directories on an NTFS volume, so you could have a "C:\Program Files" on your ACTUAL C:, then a "C:\Program Files\Alternate" and point it to another PHYSICAL drive - the Dynamic one.

I've been playing around with it recently, but I must admit that I THINK it may well add some extra overhead that I can do without, so I'm using just BASIC disks with my KT7A-RAID. Using two 40's striped, and the WD Special Ed 80 - all NTFS.

[Stan]

You can mount a dynamic or basic NTFS volume. It has to be NTFS.
Mounted drives are a quick and easy way to increase drive space.

[DVNT1]

A downside to just spanning with dynamic disks: lose one drive, lose the whole volume

[nukes]

same with a stripe.
Nice bit about mounting drives though, but I can do that anyway in Linux or BSD. In windows I gave it a 30gb drive to itself so I won't run out of space.