Converting Dynamic Disks to Basic Disks without Data Loss

Q

Qwerty

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 13, 2001
Messages
162
Is there a way to do this?
I googled all over and there doesn't seem to be a way to do this. There are 9 partitions on the drive. I read somewhere there is a hack to convert it with a single partition.


Here is the situation.
Win2k3 server C: partition is out of space, need to expand it. NO SOFTWARE tools i can find will work with dynamic disks (no ghost, no acronis, no volume manager, no nothing). These programs will resize when you clone to a new drive, etc, except it doesnt work on dynamic.

Win2k3 has built-in support to expand dynamic disks volumes, but they DON'T work for the SYSTEM drive (which is where it is out of space).

So, it looks like the last option is to somehow convert the disk to a basic disk (that is still able to boot), use one of the above tools to expand the partitions, and then convert them back to dynamic disks.

And no, there is nothing else to delete off of C: partition, it is only 4GB large.
 
And yet some people will still argue that small OS volumes are better. :rolleyes:

I'm not 100% sure, but if I remember right, there is no way to go back to a basic disk from a dynamic. I thought it gives a warning that it's an irreversable process.
 
djnes said:
And yet some people will still argue that small OS volumes are better. :rolleyes:

I'm not 100% sure, but if I remember right, there is no way to go back to a basic disk from a dynamic. I thought it gives a warning that it's an irreversable process.
Click to expand...
Yes what you say is true. There is no going back. I tried dynamic volumes ONCE, and I will never do it again. I even had a bitch of a time getting the drive reformatted to a basic volume. Yes you heard me. Even a reformat would not revert it to a basic volume. IIRC I had to use an old DOS boot disk, and FDISK the drive to get it back.

You will need to get another harddrive and back up your data if you want to revert your drive.
 
figgie said:
Qwerty

the c volume

is it on a raid disk set? Dynamic disks are a double edged sword.

How big is your C partition?

btw partition manager does support Dynamic disk to basic disk conversion :)

http://www.partition-manager.com/comparison.htm

That is what we use at work.
Click to expand...
Yeah it supports Dyn to Basic conversion only in the Pro version and Server version. Might as well buy a 250GB drive to swap data to for less then the cost of that software, and then you actually have something once you're done. If you're going to buy software for the sole purpose of one of it's features and don't expect to ever use it again, you have to be critical of the decision, and make sure you're not overlooking more beneficial options.

Edit: It does prove that reversal is possible though. :) Qwerty: How big is your Dynamic afflicted drive?
 
vmerc said:
Yeah it supports Dyn to Basic conversion only in the Pro version and Server version. Might as well buy a 250GB drive to swap data to for less then the cost of that software, and then you actually have something once you're done.
Click to expand...

unfortunately thats the only ap Im aware of that will do it.
and Id still have a full baremetal backup waiting if it bites the dust

one other possibility is to do a parallel install on a seperate HDD, make the new partition the system partition (kill the system partition ID in the old partition?)
then use diskpart.exe to resize the old system partition and try to repair
that might get your dynamic disk resized, but youd still have DD

it might just also foul everything up past all recall and see you editing the LDM manually

http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/LdmDump.html
http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/ldm/overview/database.html
http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/info/ldm.html

while it might be possible I personally wouldnt risk it and cant actually say it would work
(Ive done similar with basic disks however)
 
There's no supported way, but you can hack the partition table if you're bold. I've followed these instructions in the past: http://faq.arstechnica.com/link.php?i=1806 and they worked. I wouldn't recommend them, though: you might lose all your data.

What I did was:

1) back up everything
2) follow those instructions
3) scan the volume after rebooting, correcting errors
4) Backup all that data in a different location
5) reformat the drive
6) Restore from Step #4, keeping the Step #1 backup until I was sure it had worked.

and I was fine. It worked on three of the four drives I needed to convert.
 
There is a way to do this without any extra software!

Windows 2003 is capable of going between basic and dynamic. (Microsoft allows this in only Server 2003).

Look up the command DISKPART and you will find exactly what you are looking for. It is kind of tricky so PM me of request help here with the utility if needed.
 
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