Kerry Brown said:
Changing a basic volume to a dynamic volume does not destroy the data.
It can be done to the system volume. Go into the disk management
console, right click on Disk0 (usually C
and pick Convert to Dynamic
disk. You cannot install XP to a dynamic volume but once it's
installed it can be converted. I was pointing out that disks can be
spanned in XP, just not from the volume that XP was installed on. In
the OP his D: partition could be converted to dynamic and extended to
span his new disk. Not the answer to his question exactly but a
possibility he might want to explore.
Kerry
Sorry, it is the other way around that destroys data (converting from
dynamic to basic volumes). I've not been able to install on dynamic
volumes but you say Windows could be installed on a basic volume and
then converted to a dynamic volume. Good to know. I had read "A
spanned volume is made from free disk space that is linked together from
multiple disks (up to a maximum of 32 disks)." Well, if only free space
were used then you'd have to wipe the boot and/or system partition(s)
for Windows to get the free space. I guess the process would be to
convert the basic disk and its basic volume to a dynamic disk and a
simple volume and then adjoing that simple volume with others created
from free space available elsewhere, like the new drive, to then create
a spanned volume.
I have to wonder what is on the *outside* of the dynamic volume to
support it. The BIOS obviously doesn't support software-managed dynamic
volumes (i.e., software RAID). All it does is find the first physical
hard disk and load the code stored in the bootstrap area (first 460
bytes) of its MBR (Master Boot Record, which is sector 0). From what
I've gleaned from various articles, defining a dynamic volume blows away
the content of the MBR's bootstrap area. Indeed, the entire MBR gets
usurped since the partition table isn't there anymore (and instead a 1MB
database area is used on the disk). That would eliminate using
multi-boot managers and any other product that usurp's the MBR bootstrap
area, like GoBack.
Since "Upgrading a disk to dynamic storage will render the entire disk
unreadable to operating systems other than Windows 2000/XP", that would
preclude using PartitionMagic or any other 3rd party partitioning
software for managing your drives. The volumes within the dynamic
volume are managed by Microsoft's software RAID. DriveImage, and
probably other drive image software, doesn't support dynamic disks.
Ghost 2003's support pages says it will support dynamic disks but only
for simple volumes (those where its one, or more parts, are all on one
physical disk) and not spanned, mirrored, or RAID-5 volumes - and that
was before Symantec bought Powerquest and renamed DriveImage to Ghost.
You're also screwed if you multiboot (where you retain a basic disk) and
you used Windows XP Pro to create/convert basic volumes to dynamic
volumes (on other disks) because the other operating systems don't
support dynamic volumes; see KB article #308424.
