Dynamic VS BAsic

[Luffypsp]

Ok i've shrink my C partition. but when i want to format the shrinked partition, it asked me about changing the disk to dynamic. I choose yes and then all of my partition except my external HDD, turn into dynamic and it looks like this;

http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/4002/captureth.png

Why is it? Whats the difference in using dynamic or basic? is it bad? whats the consequences?

[Paul Komski]

http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-IE/help/4605a967-060a-490e-808b-f20438f621ce1033.mspx

http://itsvista.com/2007/02/dynamic-disk-microsofts-bastard-child/

Biggest problem is that you are effectively stuck with them since conversion back to basic means data will be lost. I have never seen any real advantages and would use hardware RAID if I wanted the same sort of options.

You will now need to rely on Microsoft's Disk Management for partitioning tasks since the usual structures found at the start of the hard drive have been altered and migrated to the end of the drive.

Another quite good link at http://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywizard/dynamic-disks-recovery.htm

[Luffypsp]

Lets say I'm sticking with it. It is still ok?

From what I understand, I cant use other OS since it acts as one big partition right?

and btw why i got that option only when creating the 4th partition? i mean the option(well it force me) to change to dynamic disk? For 2nd and 3rd, it just formatted normally to basic disks. I've come across this for the 2nd time. The first time I got, i cancelled it fearing anything bad would happen. Last night i though i would just press yes(people say its a gamble, whatever happen happens).

[Paul Komski]

Each hard drive attached to a desktop motherboard directly (or via an expansion card) can be Basic or Dynamic. Only a Basic disk (or a group of Basic disks in a hardware RAID) can support mulitibooting; a Dynamic disk can only support booting to one operating system and is controlled by the relevant Microsoft operating system installed on it.

The BIOS boot order decides which drive (or array) it will choose and attempt to boot so you can also multiboot if you have multiple internal (including eSATA external) hard drives.

After creation of Dynamic from Basic, a Hard Drive's MBR is modified and the partition tables are no longer relevant because all the partition geometry is thereafter managed from a new "database" created at the end of the Hard Drive. I'm not sure how third party applications (BiNG, GParted, Acronis, Partition Magic, etc) would view the geometry of a Dyanmic Disk but my guess is that they wouldn't like it and would create havoc if they were let loose on one.

It is certainly at least theoretically possible to create a brand new MBR and to attempt to rebuild the original standard partition tables using partition recovery software but if you want to get back to the way you were with any safety you would be best advised to clone the whole hard drive to another of the same size (or larger) or to make images of each individual partition onto another drive using something like ImageForWindows or Macrium Reflect running from within Windows.

There is retail software (http://www.dynamic-disk.com/index.html) that claims to reverse the process but of which I have no experience. The forensic Windows program WinHex should also be able to copy each partition directly from one hard drive to another one but it is not free and requires a bit of a learning curve.