Dynamic vs basic drive in XP pro

[steph123]

Hi there,
I own an Acer 633LCi laptop with mobile P4 1.7 GHz, 256 Mb DDR SDRAM, 32Mb video RAM, 30 GB HD, and Windows XP pro. I thought to partition my system file off (may be 3 GB, what is a better size?) from the rest of the HD so that I can back that up for future crashes.

From the Windows help file, I realize that I have to decide whether to set my HD to a dynamic or a basic drive, while the help file recommended that dynamic drive is better but I cannot partition the drive if the HD is set to dynamic. Is that true?

Currently, my HD is set at basic, and was partitioned into 2 drives, 1) 110 Mb of my HD was set to FATS (all of which was unoccupied), and 2) the rest was NTFS. This is the manufacturer's default, and I don't really understand why. Can someone explain this too?

Thanks.

Steph

[Ghost_Hacker]

I realize that I have to decide whether to set my HD to a dynamic or a basic drive, while the help file recommended that dynamic drive is better but I cannot partition the drive if the HD is set to dynamic. Is that true?


Not in the way you think. Dynamic disks use "volumes" instead of "partitions",but the functionality is the same. If you wish to go back to a basic disk that uses partitions then you'll have to repartition and reformat the drive.


You might find this (http://www.z-a-recovery.com/?/ms_links.htm) collection of MSKB aritcles interesting. Scroll to the bottom to find articles on Dynamic disk.


Currently, my HD is set at basic, and was partitioned into 2 drives, 1) 110 Mb of my HD was set to FATS (all of which was unoccupied), and 2) the rest was NTFS. This is the manufacturer's default, and I don't really understand why. Can someone explain this too?


Post back who made your computer and someone here may have some ideas. But your best bet is to just call their support line and ask them.




Hope this helps :)

[classicsoftware]

The reason many companies install the OS on a small FAT partition is so you leave it alone and don't install anything else on the OS partition.

Acer comes with a restore CD that will wipe the hard drive if you need to reinstall. All you ned to back up is the data on the NTFS partition

[tt123]

For Basic Disks and Dynamic Disks, they have their own differences and similarity. Here is a complete article to compare them through several aspects on: http://www.dynamic-disk.com/difference-between-basic-and-dynamic-disk.html

[Whyzman]

Welcome tt123! You are posting into a 7 year old thread...