Two Ways to Revert Dynamic Disk Back to Basic Disk under Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008/7

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, mirrored 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.

Two 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 by using dynamic disk partition software

Here we would like to introduce a comprehensive dynamic disk partition software - EASEUS Partition Master with a "Convert to Basic Disk" function built-in to help you convert the dynamic disk in an easy way. By the way, we recommend backup the dynamic disk by copying dynamic volume with EASEUS Partition Master.

Detailed steps to convert dynamic disk with EASEUS Partition Master:

1. Launch EASEUS Partition Master and select the dynamic disk that you want to convert.

2. After you choose "Convert to Basic Disk", you will see the dynamic disk has become basic disk on the disk map.

Tips:

• This Convert to Basic Disk feature is unavailable in Linux bootable disk.
• This Convert to Basic Disk feature can only process dynamic disk with simple and mirrored volumes. The other types of dynamic volume like spanned volume, striped volume are not supported. How to convert dynamic disk with mirrored volumes?
• This Convert to Basic Disk feature can only support converting up to 4 simple volumes on dynamic disk. Because the basic disk based on MBR can only create up to 4 primary partitions.
• After converting, all volumes will be primary partitions.

3. Click "Apply" to convert dynamic disk to basic disk. After EASEUS Partition Master applies these changes, you will see the dynamic disk has become basic disk in Windows Disk Management.

4. You can use "Resize/Move" feature in EASEUS Partition Master to resize basic disk which is converted from a dynamic disk.

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