Converting a Dynamic Disk BACK to a Basic disk?

[Brad]

I tried out the win2000, software controlled RAID 0 that Tom did an article about a little while back. It worked fine. However, I need to resize my C: partition. Due to bad planning, i had left my C: drive as an inadequate 2gig.

In order to create this RAID in the first place, I had to convert all the drives that were to be part of it to 'Dynamic Disks' and create a spanned volume.

I have deleted the spanned volume and now have a Primary master drive that is... C: (2gig) and d: (18gig).

Today I bought Partition Magic to alter the partition size only to discover that it cannot work with disks that have been converted to dynamic disks. Simple solution then. Convert it back to a Basic Disk.

How?

In the Management Console/Disk Management tab, the option to convert the drive back to a 'Basic disk' is greyed out. I have searched high and low all over the microsoft site. There is plenty of information there on on how to create a dynamic disk. But none on how to convert it back. This is very annoying .

<font color=purple><b>Brad</b></font color=purple><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by brad on 10/25/01 06:44 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Guest]

Hi brad,

I'm affraid you're going to have to drop all your drives partitions before to be able to revert your disk to basic mode.

If you have 2 dynamic drives and no more basic drive, here's how I would do it:
- Empty the RAID/stripped partition - hope you kept a non RAID/stripped partition somewhere on your disks...
- Delete the RAID partition
- Empty the non RAID partition of drive 2
- Delete the non RAID partition - if any on the second hdd
- Revert the second hdd to basic
- Copy all your stuff from first to second disk
* Swap both drives phisically in order to be able to boot
- Empty first disk - now attached as second
- Revert to basic

* I think you will have problem with this step... W2K could not "import" something... (can't remember what). I have done tests with VMWARE (try it at www.vmware.com) for a practice environment.

This is quite cumbersome, I admit it. I spend some time trying to look for an easier way.

Do you get Partition Magic latest version? I certainly hope they'll had that functionality.

Conclusion: don't ever switch your primary drive to dynamic!
So, you need at least 3 disks to be able to RAID with W2K. It is wise to keep a non RAID partition on the 2 drives to be able to switch back.