Convert To A Dynamic Disk In Vista
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A few things you need to keep in mind about converting to a dynamic disk. First of all, this is a one way upgrade. In order to revert back to a basic disk, you must back up all your data, delete the existing volumes and repartition the disk. Next, you cannot upgrade to a dynamic disk of you are using a mobile computer. Finally, dynamic disks are not accessible under pre-Windows 2000 operating systems. If you are dual booting with an older version of Windows, the dynamic disk will not be readable.
You can convert a basic disk to a dynamic disk by completing the steps below:
- Click Start.
- Right click Computer and click Manage.
- Click Disk Management (Local) in the left pane.
- In the right pane, right-click the disk you want to convert and click Convert to Dynamic Disk.
- Click the check box beside the disk you want to convert and click OK.
- Click Convert.
- When prompted, click Yes.
- Click OK.
Unfortunately converting back to a basic disk is not as simple but you need know the general process that has to be completed. Since the disk has to be repartitioned, your very first step will be to back up all data on the volumes then proceed with the steps below.
- Click Start.
- Right click Computer and click Manage.
- Click Disk Management (Local) in the left pane.
- Right click a volume on the dynamic disk and click Delete Volume.
- Click Yes.
- Repeat steps 4 and 5 for each volume on the disk.
- Right click the dynamic disk and click Convert to Basic.
[tags]dynamic disk, vista, convert, convert to basic[/tags]
9 Comments
paul cook
February 12th, 2007
at 6:06am
strange how things come around. I first encountered you on the internet (justsomegirl1) when I was in Canada and you senmt me a copy of your 70-297 study guide. Now I work for Microsoft in the UK. I stumbled acrosxs atech article by you by accident.
Hope life is treating you well
Paulius
July 17th, 2007
at 3:29am
Strange, but I don’t have “Covert to dynamic disk” in there. Maybe it’s because it’s not availalbe in Vista Home Premium?
MWR2NY
July 21st, 2007
at 7:50pm
Same thing I don’t have the option in Vista 32 bit to go to Dynamic. I would like to use the dynamic disc so I can expand my space across mutiple drives.
Eric
July 6th, 2008
at 4:07am
@Paulius, I also could not find it at first.
You should not click on the volume, but on the Disk 0, Disk 1 etc.
Zirix
October 8th, 2008
at 12:15pm
I see some comments about not able to convert to a dynamic disk. This is because dynamic disks are supported for Vista Business, Enterprise and Ultimate.
–Zirix
ender21
October 18th, 2008
at 1:14pm
So in a single-drive laptop running Vista x64 Ultimate, is there no benefit to converting the drive to Dynamic?
Mark Sowards
February 27th, 2009
at 12:33pm
I just configured a new 64bit Vista Ultimate system. The 1TB drive was split into to volumes. C: was 100GB and d: was the remain 800+GB. The C: drive is too small for this 64bit OS so I converted the disk to dynamic. I did this becuase even when I delete the d:\ drive and tried to extend the c: drive the option was not available (greyed out). So I converted the disk to dynamic hoping this would allow me to expand the boot(active) partition. However I was still unable to extend and when I rebooted ,the system no longer boots into Windows. The BIOS says the drive is there and there is no complaint that the boot partition is correupted, but the system never responds after the initial post boot messages.
mike
June 9th, 2009
at 6:12am
im a student and was told that you can not convert a disk to dynamic on lap tops xp pro i just did it i have read that you can in other forums that portable computers wont have this feature it can be dane
wway110
September 21st, 2009
at 5:55pm
Windows disk management can be able to fulfill a conversion about basic disk to dynamic disk, but it can not be
reversed. If you want to convert back to basic, you need to delete all volumes on the dynamic disk.
However, the Dynamic Disk Converter tool can be able to help you convert back to basic disk without deleting all volumes. here http://www.dynamic-disk.com/convert-dynamic-disk-to-basic.html for detailed.