Basic or Dynamic disk - which should be used?

Running a basic disk should be fine for most people. Its all I run.

Dynamic allows some advanced features. its pretty much a way to run raid from the windows OS. It has a feature like JBOD(Just a Bunch Of Disks) Allowing the user to use multiple drives as one(Spanning a partition over many disk to give one large volume).

I see no reason why one type or the other would fix a drive failure.

Have you tried WDC Lifeguard tools for windows? It can fix some drive issues as well as diagnose problems. Just NEVER wrote ZEROs the drive. THIS WILL ERASE EVERYTHING.

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=608...

Yeah I downloaded the WDC Lifeguard tool, but it doesn't seem to be recognising either disk. Now the computer has decided the 1.5TB is my primary disk for some strange reason, which I suspect is causing some of the problems.

Go to Start and search for "diskmgmt.msc" without the quotes. This will bring up disk management. See if anything looks strange. This is also where you manage partitions.

Take care when playing in there as some options can erase a disk, but it should warn you.

If you can post a screen capture it may help as well.

Basic is for basic use.

Dynamic is for RAID arrays.

Oh ok. To ask a potentially stupid question - what is a RAID array, and why would I want to use one?

ISN'T A STUPID QUESTION.

Read this, with the article you can learnd a little about RAID arrays.

In short, the RAID arrays is a special HDD configuration that can help in some aspects like performance, fault tolerance or both in the same configuration.