How to Copy/Clone Dynamic Volume to Basic Disk and Resize Dynamic Disk Indirectly?

To maximize the performance of dynamic volume, you may use Disk Management which provides some useful features. However, when the volume which contains your Operating System is out of space and you need to extend this volume to make sure the Operating System can work normally, you may find Disk Management doesn't allow you to extend system volume. Actually, the extend function built in the Disk Management is not available for system volume, boot volume, Striped Volume, Mirror Volume and RAID 5 Volume. Then some third party partition software like EASEUS Partition Master will help you extend/resize dynamic volumes indirectly.

EASEUS Partition Master could NOT resize dynamic disk directly now. But you can copy the dynamic volume to unallocated space on basic disk and resize this basic disk (How to resize the basic disk?), etc. All data of the previous dynamic volume will be safely copied to the basic disk automatically with Copy Dynamic Volume Wizard built in EASEUS Partition Master. After this, you may remain the basic disk to use or convert the basic disk to dynamic volume (Simple volume or Mirror volume only) again in Disk Management.

Certainly, there are some software in the market which can convert dynamic disk to basic disk and then resize the partition, while it will expose your system or data to a larger risk with no doubt, if there is an error or failure during the converting; instead, to copy dynamic volume to basic disk firstly, and then resize the target partition will guarantee your data 100% safety.

Besides, please be noted that this feature-Copy Dynamic Volume works only under Windows; it is not supported under bootable CD.

EASEUS Partition Master provides Dynamic Volume Copy Wizard to help you copy dynamic volume easily and resize the volume indirectly and safely. This function can be found here:

1. Wizard -> Copy Dynamic Volume

2. Click dynamic volume copy icon on toolbar.

Follow the steps below to copy dynamic volume and resize the volume indirectly: (In this case, suppose you want to copy and resize the system volume.)

1. The initial hard drive configuration.

You may find that the free space of system C: volume is not enough and needs to be extended.

2. Extend the volume by using Disk Management tool.

A box pops up and indicates that the volume cannot be extended, because it is the system volume.

3. Then you may turn to EASEUS Partition Master. Run this program, and then start "Wizard" > "Copy Dynamic Volume" or click "Copy Dynamic Volume" on the toolbar.

4. EASEUS Partition Master will list all existing volumes. Select the system volume C: and click "Next".

5. The program automatically checks the volume to make copy operation faster and smoother.

6. Choose an unallocated space on a basic disk and click "Next".

7. Edit the destination partition, you can drag the borderline to resize partition or drag the central place to move the partition.

8. Click "Finish", the operation will be added to "Operations Pending" panel on the main window.

Attention: If the dynamic disk you copy is not the system volume, ticking box in step 9 is not a must while step 10 and step 11 can be ignored.

9. Click "Apply" button and tick the check-box in the pop-up window.

10. After rebooting and completing the operation, EASEUS Partition Master will shut down the computer automatically.

11. Replace the source dynamic disk that contains the system volume with the destination basic disk, and then boot the computer. (You may see the copy of C: partition has been extended.)

12. Convert the basic disk back to dynamic.

13. You may see that the volume has been extended successfully in the Disk Management tool.

For different volume types, the situations are different when converting basic disk back to dynamic:

Simple Volume

After copying the Simple Volume to a basic disk, you can resize the partition. You may also convert it back to Simple Volume in Disk Management after this operation.

Mirror Volume

If you want to convert the Mirror Volume back after being copied and resized on the basic disk, you can convert it to Simple Volume in Disk Management first, then adding mirror with another dynamic disk.

Striped/Spanned/RAID5 Volume

If you want to convert them back to dynamic volumes after being copied and resized on the basic disk, these volumes should be converted to Simple Volume or Mirror Volume.

Tips:

1. This feature works under Windows only, and it is not supported under bootable CD.

2. The source volume should be FAT file system or NTFS.

3. If the source volume is the system boot volume, please make sure there is no boot partition on the destination disk, otherwise the system on destination partition may fail to boot after copy.

4. The destination disk should be larger than the used space of source dynamic volume.

For better data security, our free backup software - EASEUS Todo Backup will help you a lot. It provides easy-to-use interface to backup and restore your system, disk and partition in a few minutes.

Related Articles:

• Convert dynamic disk to basic disk without data loss.
• Partition copy
• Disk copy
• Dynamic Disk Copy/Clone to Backup or Replace or Resize Dynamic Disk