basic/dynamic/active partitions

ringo747 · 17 Apr 2007 at 02:18

Hi,

Just installed another disk today into an enclosure and fired up my disk admin panel in windows xp. At the moment all my non system disks are labelled as basic disks with healthy (active) status. I notice that if i right click I have an option to convert to dynamic disk. What is the correct setting for non system disks or does it not really matter? I'm guessing there is nothing important here really but its just worth checking out.

Thanks

rpstewart · 17 Apr 2007 at 09:00

Doesn't really matter. Dynamic disks are really only required if you want to do striping/spanning etc or if the partition is over 2Tb. One of the big issues with Dynamic disks is when you upgrade to Vista - only certain versions support them and you can't convert back to basic disks without clearing the drive.

ringo747 · 17 Apr 2007 at 10:32

thanks for clearing that up - think il just leave them as they are then.

IAmATeaf · 17 Apr 2007 at 15:53

Converting disks to Dynamic puts the disks under software control. Does give you some extra feature to add and joins partitions but IMHO not worth it as the data then can't be seen natively. Can be a right royal PITA when things go wrong.