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Difference Basic and Dynamic Disk

Basic disks use traditional partition tables and support primary partitions, extended partitions, and logical drives. Dynamic disks are supported in Windows XP Pro, 2000, and 2003 and allow dynamic volumes like spanned, striped, and mirrored volumes to be managed without restarting. Dynamic disks also allow simple volumes, spanned volumes, striped volumes, mirrored volumes, and RAID-5 volumes, but are not supported on portable computers or XP Home Edition PCs. Storage types are separate from file systems, which can be FAT16, FAT32 or NTFS on basic or dynamic disks.

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70 views

Difference Basic and Dynamic Disk

Basic disks use traditional partition tables and support primary partitions, extended partitions, and logical drives. Dynamic disks are supported in Windows XP Pro, 2000, and 2003 and allow dynamic volumes like spanned, striped, and mirrored volumes to be managed without restarting. Dynamic disks also allow simple volumes, spanned volumes, striped volumes, mirrored volumes, and RAID-5 volumes, but are not supported on portable computers or XP Home Edition PCs. Storage types are separate from file systems, which can be FAT16, FAT32 or NTFS on basic or dynamic disks.

Uploaded by

sathish87
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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What's the difference between Basic and Dynamic Disks in Windows XP/2000/2003?

Microsoft Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003 offer two types of disk
storage: basic and dynamic.

Basic Disk Storage

Basic storage uses normal partition tables supported by MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows 95,
Microsoft Windows 98, Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Me), Microsoft Windows
NT, Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP. A disk initialized for
basic storage is called a basic disk. A basic disk contains basic volumes, such as primary
partitions, extended partitions, and logical drives. Additionally, basic volumes include
multidisk volumes that are created by using Windows NT 4.0 or earlier, such as volume sets,
stripe sets, mirror sets, and stripe sets with parity. Windows XP does not support these
multidisk basic volumes. Any volume sets, stripe sets, mirror sets, or stripe sets with parity
must be backed up and deleted or converted to dynamic disks before you install Windows
XP Professional.

Dynamic Disk Storage

Dynamic storage is supported in Windows XP Professional, Windows 2000 and Windows


Server 2003. A disk initialized for dynamic storage is called a dynamic disk. A dynamic disk
contains dynamic volumes, such as simple volumes, spanned volumes, striped volumes,
mirrored volumes, and RAID-5 volumes. With dynamic storage, you can perform disk and
volume management without the need to restart Windows.
Note: Dynamic disks are not supported on portable computers or on Windows XP Home
Edition-based computers.

You cannot create mirrored volumes or RAID-5 volumes on Windows XP Home Edition,
Windows XP Professional, or Windows XP 64-Bit Edition-based computers. However, you
can use a Windows XP Professional-based computer to create a mirrored or RAID-5 volume
on remote computers that are running Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Advanced
Server, or Windows 2000 Datacenter Server, or the Standard, Enterprise and Data Center
versions of Windows Server 2003.

Storage types are separate from the file system type. A basic or dynamic disk can contain
any combination of FAT16, FAT32, or NTFS partitions or volumes.
A disk system can contain any combination of storage types. However, all volumes on the
same disk must use the same storage type.

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