'simple volume' - what does this mean?

aardvark · 12 Jan 2007 at 19:46

i just got a replacement hard disc back from seagate as the other failed - i bought a icy box enclosure (sata) as i thought i could use the replacement as a backup - anyway, disc management has it listed as a 'simple' layout (rather than 'partition'), the type is 'dynamic' (rather than 'basic') and its now formatting.

what does this mean? i have never seen this in disc management before - i thought it does just be recognised like all the other disc's or like a usb HD (which i also have and didn't do this).

cheers

aardvark · 12 Jan 2007 at 20:03

ok, i've cancelled the format and i'm going to format it as a basic disk - not sure why it automatically chose a dynamic disk.

so my next quesion is: what are the advantages of having a dynamic disk over a basic one (since i have just read that you can convert one way but not the other).

cheers (again)

rpstewart · 12 Jan 2007 at 20:31

Dynamic disks contain (cunningly) dynamic volumes which are analogous to partitions. Now a dynamic volume can be a simple volume (a volume contained on a single disk) or they can be more complex - Spanned (JBOD), Striped (RAID0), Mirrored (RAID1) or RAID5 - and reside across multiple HDDs. Dynamic volumes can be extended into free space from within Disk Management rather than having to resort to the likes of Partition Manager.

aardvark · 12 Jan 2007 at 20:35

so if you just want one partition on a disk and are not raiding or anything fancy then there is no advantage?

rpstewart · 12 Jan 2007 at 20:51

None that I know of.

aardvark · 12 Jan 2007 at 20:54

far enough - thats something else i don't have to worry about then - i'll cross it off the list