hagen79 :
I've just installed Windows 7. I'm using a new large hdd, so I created a 30Gb partition and installed the OS on it. Now I've booted Windows, and I want to partition the remainder of the hdd, so I've opened Disk Management. It shows Disk 0 as a Basic disk, but when I right-click the unallocated portion, the menu only includes "New Simple Volume." But simple volumes are only for Dynamic disks. What's up?
For your help, many heartfelt thanks.
Hi there,
A "simple volume" means the volume is on a single physical disk, (rather than 2 or more physical drives in multiple different possible configuratioins)
So when you initially set up a HDD, in the BIOS you can choose the drive to be a Basic Disk, or if you have multiplel drives, a Dynamic Disk (RAID or JBODs).
A Basic Disk can have 4 Partitions, all on the same physical HDD. The partitions are called "simple volumes" because they live on a single HDD.
A Dynamic Disc can be set up in 3 different ways, a simple volume (1 HDD), a spanned volume (on 2 or more HDDs) or stripped volume (spread equally across 2 or more HDDs)
So when you initially set up your single HDD, the BIOS set it up as a single Basic Disk (only choice for 1 drive). When you installed the OS on a partition on the HDD, it was set up as a Simple Volume (on the single HDD). The unallocated (raw) space can be partitioned in 3 more partitions (or 2 + an extended for logical drives), and since the partition(s) will be on that single HDD, it is called a "Simple Volume".
So, after all that, a "Simple Volume" can be on either a Basic or Dynamic Disk. Hope that's understandable and helpful.