Three Ways to Revert Dynamic Disk Back to Basic Disk under Windows xp/2000/2003/Vista

Advantages of dynamic disk

Dynamic disk, equipped with Windows 2000 and also available in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, provides a number of benefits over basic disks, including the ability to support simple volumes, spanned volumes, striped volumes, mirror volumes, and more. A basic disk, on the other hand, supports only the more traditional partitions, extended partitions, and logical drives. Therefore, many Windows administrators make use of dynamic disks in order to provide some level of data protection offered through the use of software RAID sets.

Some people prefer to use dynamic disk since it allows them to resize volumes on dynamic disk easily, having fallen victim to the myth that volumes on a basic disk cannot be resized. In reality, volumes on basic disk can be resized when there is free space available on a disk.

Disadvantages of dynamic disk

Although the dynamic disk contains a number of benefits over basic disk, they can also be a significant source of frustration for its users in the following cases:

• Dynamic disk are not supported on drives connected to a Windows system through the USB or FireWire ports even though a registry hack can enable dynamic disk on FireWire.
• Dynamic disk cannot be accessed by the previous Windows systems, such as DOS, Windows 95/98/Me/NT.
• Although the dynamic disk supports software based RAID which is necessary in some cash-strapped companies that can’t afford hardware RAID, the software based RAID is of high risk of data loss and lower performance compared with hardware RAID.
• It is a little more difficult for the dynamic disk to connect with the iSCSI-based SANs. Microsoft also recommends you not to have any dynamic disk in servers while installed the iSCSI initiator.
• Dynamic disk are not supported in Windows 2000 Advanced Server and Windows Server 2003 cluster services.

Three ways to revert dynamic disk to basic disk

Revert dynamic disk to basic via deleting all volumes through the following steps

1. Start the Disk Management tool;

2. Move data off all volumes housed on dynamic disks;

3. Delete all volumes from the dynamic disk;

4. Right-click the dynamic disk and choose revert to basic disk;

5. Recreate the volumes as partitions on the basic disk;

6. Move the original data back.

Revert dynamic disk to basic via partition recovery software

Tips: In this way, it is still necessary to delete all the volumes on the dynamic disk and then use partition recovery software to assist you convert to basic disk. However, this recovery partition is at risk, but the advantage of the way is that the data not need to be backed up, because this partition deleted can be recovered by partition recovery software.

1. Delete all the volumes through Disk Management tool;

2. Revert the dynamic disk to basic;

3. Recover the previous deleted partition by using partition recovery software.

Revert dynamic disk to basic by using dynamic disk partition software

Tips: In this way, you should backup the dynamic data first and then you can create, resize, move, change partition and copy dynamic disk with the partition software which is more safe to protect your data and more convenient to manage partitions.

1. Backup all the data on the dynamic disk by cloning dynamic disk first;

2. Delete all the volumes on the dynamic disk;

3. Revert dynamic disk to the basic through Disk Management tool;

4. Create new partition on the basic disk and then clone all data back to the partition.You may choose any one of the three ways provided above to revert dynamic disk. If you prefer to pick up the last but safest one, you may download a demo to have a test Now!

Related Articles:

• How to Expand/Extend Raid 5 Array or Partition in Windows?
• How to Copy/Clone Dynamic Volume to Basic Disk and Resize Dynamic Disk Indirectly?
• The Safest Way to Resize Dynamic Disk – Copy The Dynamic Volume to Basic Disk and Resize
• Server Partition Manager to Manage your Windows Server in an Easier Way