Overview and implementation of fault-tolerant volumes

Learning bridge to converting storage types The third course in the series addresses converting storage types. If you need a refresher, read through the following material.

Creating dynamic volumes

There may be times when you'll want to render a basic disk dynamic. Unlike the partition limit on basic disks, there is no limit to the number of volumes you can create on a dynamic disk, a feature that can be useful when organizing large hard disks. You may choose to convert to dynamic disk because you need to create more divisions on the disk than would be possible using traditional partitioning. Another reason to upgrade to dynamic disks is to take advantage of fault tolerance; you cannot create fault-tolerant volumes on a basic disk. You can also extend volumes over multiple disks. Be sure to consider which volume type best suits your needs for efficient use of disk space, performance, and fault tolerance.

Converting disk Type

You can convert a disk from basic storage to dynamic storage at any time with no loss of data.
To upgrade a basic disk to a dynamic disk:

Open Disk Management
Right-click the basic disk that you want to upgrade
Click Upgrade to Dynamic Disk
A wizard provides on-screen instructions. If the disk you are upgrading contains either the boot or system partition, or both, you need to restart the computer to complete the upgrade process

Note: As a precaution, you should always back up the data on a disk before you convert the storage type from basic to dynamic.

Results of upgrading

When you convert a basic disk to a dynamic disk, any existing partitions on the basic disk become volumes.
The following table describes the results of converting a disk from basic storage to dynamic storage.

Basic disk organization (before conversion)	Dynamic disk organization (after conversion)
System and boot partitions	Simple volume
Primary partition	Simple volume
Extended partition and logical drives	Any logical drives become simple volumes and any free space becomes unallocated space
Volume set	Spanned volume
Stripe set	Striped volume
Mirror set	Mirrored volume
Stripe set with parity	RAID-5 volume

Any disks that you upgrade must contain at least 1MB of unallocated space for the upgrade to succeed; the conversion process creates a 1MB region at the end of the dynamic disk where it stores a database that tracks the configuration of all dynamic disks in the computer.