Basic or Dynamic Disks in XP and 2000

[Xaotic]

Soundster suggested this poll on whether people are using Basic or Dynamic disks.

I use Basic unless there is a compelling reason to do otherwise. I have a large app with preset folders on a server. It was easier to mount partitions into the folders than to rewrite the code.

 

[shadowdr]

I need to use DOS for Ghosting my raid partitions so dynamic is out of the question for me.

 

[Soundster]

Basic Volume seems to be more compatible with various Operating systems.
My Spare storage is in Dynamic though, just to see how it'll work out.

 

[FTC]

Well, I use basic since most imaging software does not work with dynamic disks, and don't really need to upgrade disk configurations so much, so I can plan on what I need in advance (normally).

 

[Soundster]

Well, I use basic since most imaging software does not work with dynamic disks, and don't really need to upgrade disk configurations so much, so I can plan on what I need in advance (normally).

Why does imaging software not work with dynamic volume?

 

[Xaotic]

Dynamic disks cannot be read through DOS or Win9X kernel OS, even with third party NTFS applications.

 

[FTC]

Why does imaging software not work with dynamic volume?

Hi, basically for what Xaotic said, plus the fact that dynamic discs have a different, more complex organization (you can join dynamic partitions, mirror or soft strip them,...) and most imaging sw does not have support for this yet. Note that imaging software *must* understand the inners of the filesystem that is being imaged..

Regards
FTC

 

[INT21]

Dynamic disk partition layout

Dynamic disks do not rely on the partition table for their layout. The last 1MB on the disk is used for a configuration database. Since most partitioning/imaging programs are only aware of the partition table, they cannot understand the dynamic disk configuration in the private region (last 1MB database) for the disk.

 

[merlinx29]

Tried dynamic once and didnt like it ... partion magic doesnt know how to work with it. When you have a basic partition you can do whatever you want with partition magic.

 

[ghettocomp]

I mostly use Dynamic, bad thing is if something goes wrong, it is MUCH more difficult to recover the drive without complete loss of data.

 

[towcutter]

I use dynamic disks and all data is backed up on dvd if i have problems.

 

[ghettocomp]

As far as backing up my drives, I keep backups on several locations across the lan. Recovery is always possible, It just takes longer. One of these days I should get smart and convert to basic drives and fortify it all with a set of DVD-RW backups

 

[tom10167]

I don't know what it means??