Dynamic disk

[DVOM]

I'm working on a machine that's got the main 120G disk as basic and the slave 120G disk as dynamic. (OS is w2k)

I don't know much about dynamic disks. What, if any, are the advantages to having just the slave disk dynamic? From what I've read, it seems that all the disks should be dynamic for maximum advantage.

Will the main drive being basic and the slave dynamic cause me any problems? The slave is used for data storage and storing ghost images of the OS partition. As it is, I'm unable to view the contents of the ghost image with Ghost Explorer.

The final setup I'm trying to create has the main/basic drive partitioned with 12G for the OS and 108G for data. The slave/dynamic drive is to contain synced copies of the data folders from the main drive. The slave is in a removable HDD tray.

I'm thinking that it would be best to wipe the slave and convert it to basic.

Any thoughts are appreciated.

[10ECsoon]

I know that dynamic disks can have multiple volumes, as opposed to 4 primary partitions for basic disks - notice the terminology, basic = partition, dynamic = volumes. The other is that to use Windows 2000 to build software raid setups requires dynamic disks (although realistically, you'd want to use hardware for raid).

[SuperSparks]

There's quite a bit of info on dynamic disks in the Resource Kit documentation here:

Windows 2000 Resource Kit

I think if you want to go down that road you should make sure you've got a very good backup strategy. From everything I've been able to discover about dynamic disks (admittedly not that much) there seems to be a lot of potential for real disaster, where you could lose the data on all the drives.

[SuperSparks]

Here's a KB article:

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;329707

[DVOM]

Thanks for the replies. Looks like it's best to convert back to basic.

From SS's link:

"If you do not need spanned volumes, striped volumes, mirrored volumes, or RAID-5 sets, it is best to use basic disks."

I'm not sure why the disk was originally set up as dynamic. That's not the way I would have set it up.

"I think if you want to go down that road you should make sure you've got a very good backup strategy."

Since this IS the backup strategy, (LOL), looks like basic it is. Also, since there's about 80G of files to backup, the owner is reluctant to use CD's or DVD's.

Sooo, I'm going to use a third 120G HDD for off site backup.