B
Barry
Dear Group: I read the following in David Pogue's new book, "Windows Vista the Misising Manual" that disturbs m and I want to know if it is true. I underlined the areas I am questioning. I ws told that prigrams such as Aconis Disk Director and Norton Partition Magic would overcome these problems.Thanks Barry
Page #622 and #623
How Dynamic Disks Work
- Dynamic disks are a specialty of Vista Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate. No other version of Windows can read them (not even other Vista versions).
- Dynamic disks can contain only one operating system. You can't dual boot from another partition on a dynamic disk, as you can with basic disks. (Dual booting means choosing which two operating systems to use each time you turn on the PC.) Since you can't extend your boot drive, it's unlikely that you'd want to turn it into a dynamic disk, but you should keep this limitation in mind if you decide to install another operating system, such as Linux, onto the disks you want to convert to dynamic disks.
=======
Note: You might have a dual-boot system and not even know it. Many manufacturers hide a bootable operating system on the hard drive whose sole purpose is to restore your computer to its original configuration when things go wrong.
For example, Dell puts a copy of MS-DOS on a small partition. If you hold down F11 as the computer is starting up, it launches into DOS, load Norton Ghost, and uses it to restore your hard drive using files from yet another partition - this time, a hidden 3.5 GB partition.
If you convert your drive into a dynamic disk, you will lose the ability to invoke this rescue mode.
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To convert a hard drive to a dynamic disk, it must set aside an invisible storage area to hold a dynamic disk database. If you partition the drive using Windows XP Professional or Vista, then Windows already reserved enough space for this purpose. But if the drive was partitioned with another operating system, you may have to erase it before converting it to a dynamic disk.
Dynamic disks generally don't work on laptops, removable disks, disks connected by USB cables or IEEE 1394 (FireWire) cables, or disks connected to shared SCSI or Fibre Channel buses. If your disks fall into any of these categories, Windows Vista won't let you convert them to dynamic disks.
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Page #775
Dual Booting
There's just one wrinkle with dual-booting. If you install Vista onto a separate partition (or a different drive), as you must, you won't find any of your existing programs listed in the Start menu, and your desktop won't be configured the way it is in your original operating system. You'll generally wind up having to reinstall every program into your Vista world, and re-establish all of your settings, exactly as though the Vista "side" were a brand-new PC.
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Page #654 to Page #656
Shadow Copies
Business - Enterprise - Ultimate Edition
NOTE: Here's a warning to anyone who dual-boots between Vista and Windows XP (page 623): for some extremely technical and extremely unfortunate reasons, starting up Windows XP deletes all of your shadow copies and restore points (and all Complete PC backups, described later in this chapter, except for most recent one).
The only workaround is to turn off the hard drive that contains these files before starting up Windows XP. Microsoft is very sorry.
Page #622 and #623
How Dynamic Disks Work
- Dynamic disks are a specialty of Vista Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate. No other version of Windows can read them (not even other Vista versions).
- Dynamic disks can contain only one operating system. You can't dual boot from another partition on a dynamic disk, as you can with basic disks. (Dual booting means choosing which two operating systems to use each time you turn on the PC.) Since you can't extend your boot drive, it's unlikely that you'd want to turn it into a dynamic disk, but you should keep this limitation in mind if you decide to install another operating system, such as Linux, onto the disks you want to convert to dynamic disks.
=======
Note: You might have a dual-boot system and not even know it. Many manufacturers hide a bootable operating system on the hard drive whose sole purpose is to restore your computer to its original configuration when things go wrong.
For example, Dell puts a copy of MS-DOS on a small partition. If you hold down F11 as the computer is starting up, it launches into DOS, load Norton Ghost, and uses it to restore your hard drive using files from yet another partition - this time, a hidden 3.5 GB partition.
If you convert your drive into a dynamic disk, you will lose the ability to invoke this rescue mode.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To convert a hard drive to a dynamic disk, it must set aside an invisible storage area to hold a dynamic disk database. If you partition the drive using Windows XP Professional or Vista, then Windows already reserved enough space for this purpose. But if the drive was partitioned with another operating system, you may have to erase it before converting it to a dynamic disk.
Dynamic disks generally don't work on laptops, removable disks, disks connected by USB cables or IEEE 1394 (FireWire) cables, or disks connected to shared SCSI or Fibre Channel buses. If your disks fall into any of these categories, Windows Vista won't let you convert them to dynamic disks.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Page #775
Dual Booting
There's just one wrinkle with dual-booting. If you install Vista onto a separate partition (or a different drive), as you must, you won't find any of your existing programs listed in the Start menu, and your desktop won't be configured the way it is in your original operating system. You'll generally wind up having to reinstall every program into your Vista world, and re-establish all of your settings, exactly as though the Vista "side" were a brand-new PC.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Page #654 to Page #656
Shadow Copies
Business - Enterprise - Ultimate Edition
NOTE: Here's a warning to anyone who dual-boots between Vista and Windows XP (page 623): for some extremely technical and extremely unfortunate reasons, starting up Windows XP deletes all of your shadow copies and restore points (and all Complete PC backups, described later in this chapter, except for most recent one).
The only workaround is to turn off the hard drive that contains these files before starting up Windows XP. Microsoft is very sorry.