Converting from Dynamic to Basic Hard Disk

Converting from Dynamic to Basic Hard Disk

Converting to a dynamic disk is intended to be a one-way process. It is only possible to convert a dynamic disk back to a basic disk at the expense of losing all your data. If it is necessary to convert a dynamic disk back to a basic disk you should back up your data and delete all the volumes on the disk. You can then convert the disk to basic and restore your data.

You must remove all volumes (and therefore all data) from a dynamic disk before you can change it back to a basic disk. After you convert a dynamic disk back to a basic disk, you can only create partitions and logical drives on volumes, striped volumes, dynamic RAID-5 volumes, or spanned volumes, respectively.

After being converted from a basic disk, a dynamic disk can no longer contain partitions or logical drives and the only operating systems which can access it are Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000, or Windows XP Professional. To convert a dynamic disk back to a basic disk, perform the following steps:

Convert a Dynamic to a Basic disk from the Windows 07 command line.

1. Open a command prompt window, type diskpart, and press Enter.

2. Type commands or help to view a list of available commands.

3. Type select disk 0 to select the first hard disk, select disk 1 to select the second hard disk etc. and press Enter.

4. Type convert basic and press Enter.

5. Type exit to quit diskpart.exe, then restart the computer to have the new configuration take effect.