Dynamic Disk???

B

bheagle

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Ok heres a simple question...
By converting my NTFS to a DYNAMIC disk structure vs BASIC
do I gain or lose performance, or Does it stay the same?
 
Your perfomance will be the same, there is no reason to use dynamic disk unless you are going to stripe the drives or merge them together using windows disk management and tha would require you having 2 drives set to dynamic...so if you aren'd going any of that and also just have one drive just leav eit as basic :)
 
Thx for the quick reply, I have two drives a 30 and a 40 gig one has two partitions one has three I basically want to be able to allocate the two together at some point...
 
if you want to merge them together at some point then they would both have to be dynamic disks....I highly recommend you just keep them separate

if you merge them they essentially are addressed by windows as one drive and contain only one MFT...it's almost similar to a striped array in some points...you won't see a performance boost of any noticeable amount and if one harddrive fails or if your MFT or such gets corrupted you will lose BOTH drives

so remember if you do it..keep good backups because if one drive goes both are gone

and also once you convert to dynamic you cannot convert back to basic without a complete format.
 
Great info.... nice to know that part....
Thanks again
 
I've used Striped dynamic drives before I converted my Ultra1oo to a Fastrack100...

Software raid is just as quick as a Fastrak...
The limitations Qumahlin mentioned are the same for these "raid" controllers if one dies so does the other...
But you can make some really wierd setups with DD... On a controller a 40g drive and a 30g drive equals 60g... On dynamic disks a 40g+30g= 60g+10g...

However the limitaions of Dynamic disks are:
1: you cannot install an OS to a dynamic drive,
2: nothing but Win2k and Winxp can read a dynamic disk,

So basically unless you want a "raid" drive leave them alon as mentioned IF you want raid then it's more flexable that hardware...
 
Originally posted by allan
Very nicely done, Qumahlin.


Aww *blushes* thanks :)

And the setup oddities that misery mentions are all normal

in a striped array the drives must be the EXACT same size...if they are not, the array will only be able to use a equal amt (hence why if you used a 40g and a 30g the raid can only use 60g, this is due to in a striped array the binary data is split so it is almost like one drive gets all zeroes, the other gets all ones..so if the drives aren't equal it would deteriorate)

With windows DD it knows to set the stiped amts to the same for the drives, but since it is software it can also re-partition and save the 10g you would normally lose in a hardware raid setup :)
 
Sorry

Sorry for bringing this thread back from the dead :eek: but I really need to understand something.

I've similar intentions as far as Raid or DD goes. Firstly, I dont' know the difference between Raid0 (stripe) and DynamicDisk.

I have 2 60GB hdd which I intend on striping. After reading this I thought to myself, how am I going to install an OS on the stripe? and as far as I understood it, striping is an almagation of the two (or more) disks? So am I to understand that I"ll have a HUGe 120GB of a single partition (joint) ? OR can I split them into different partitions thus protecting myself from possibly disk failure in the future? Such is the case with one logical drive split (parititoned) 3 ways and sometimes viruses or what have you would corrupt the OS's partition - no problem, just format and reinstall.. is this the case with Raid0 (striping).


Thanks in advance to anyone daring enough to read and try to understand what I just said :eek:
 
If you Hardware Stripe you will have one big 120gig partition..each holding half of some data..so if one drive fails..the other drive is useless.

As for installing the OS, when you goto install XP you need to load the Raid's respective driver...XP will then see the Raid array as one drive and install like normal...I'm not sure about separate paritions in a striped array as I have never tried it..

As for Dynamic Disk..it is kind of like a software Raid..if you REALLY wanna stripe your HD's (remember your not gonna see alot of performance boost out of it..) just go Raid...cause DD is gonna be a pain..and if XP ever has a problem so are any HD's that you have set to Dynamic

hoped I helped a little.
 
Sorry Qumahlin, but I ten d to dis agrre on this...

If chosing between software raid (striping) and a raid controller, which I found out is not true raid but actual software based itself, just done on card... I would go software...

When I first found out about the software raid that dynamic disks offered I jumped and tried it... If I remember correctly I had my OS on a 15g, a 30g and a 10g,,, That gave a stripped drive of 20g and an "extra" 20g dynamic drive... At one point I bought a Promise Ultra 100 to connect the drives to...

Back then I must admit that I did'nt keep very good backups and often had to reinstall Win2k Pro... All I ever had to do was import the foreign disk to get the drives working... Losing data is losing data... When I converted the Ultra to a Fastrack100 I actualy had more problems the biggest was data corruption from not having the sectors correct... I lost 20g through the hardware and when I lost the 10g drive I lost all the info on both drives... If the utmost in reliability is need then stripping, of anykind is not a good idea...

The perfomance of a raid drive is NOT noticable unless your doing heavy graphic work and use it for your scratch file of whatever,,, And you BETTER do backups to a non-stripped drive... Don't even think of keeping your 10g of music there... for the newbies...

MrBreaker, The dynamic drives mention are a way to get software based raid from Win2k and WinXp... It allows the OS to have more control over the drive... There are really two different things... Win2k did'nt support installing the OS on a DD even though I was able to work around it once,,, don't remember how though... And yes you can make any drive anything you want with DD... You can make one stripped, one spanned and 2 regular or any combination as long as you have room...
 

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