What is Dynamic Disk | Everything You Need to Know About Windows Dynamic Disks

What is a Dynamic Disk?

A dynamic disk is a physical disk that uses the LDM database to manage its volumes.

What is an LDM database? LDM stands for Logical Disk Manager, which is a hidden 1MB database located at the end of a dynamic disk. This 1MB database contains information about all volumes on a single disk and also stores relevant details about each dynamic disk, such as drive letters, volume labels, starting sector of the volume, volume size, file system of the volume, and the current dynamic disk status.

If you have multiple dynamic disks, each disk stores this information, which means that all the dynamic disks are interrelated. This interrelation is what causes Windows Disk Management to show a “missing” disk when you remove a dynamic disk from the system. All of this information is stored in the LDM database, which makes it as important as the partition table on a basic disk. You can probably guess where this is going:

Dynamic Disk Volume Structure

The blue area at the beginning of a dynamic disk is the MBR, which stores the disk's partition table. This partition table is different from that of a basic disk; it mainly tells Windows and other disk managers that this is a dynamic disk, not an empty one. At the end of a dynamic disk is the LDM database, in another blue area.

What's the difference between Basic Disks and Dynamic Disks in Windows?

Microsoft Windows operating systems provide two types of disk storage: Basic and Dynamic disks. Basic disks are the most common type of disk used on Windows computers. They consist of partitions known as primary partitions and logical drives. To learn more about the differences between Basic and Dynamic disks:

Basic Disk Storage

• Basic storage uses a standard partition table supported by MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows 95, Microsoft Windows 98, Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Me), Microsoft Windows NT, Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, and Windows XP. • A disk initialized for basic storage is called a basic disk. • A basic disk contains basic volumes, such as primary partitions, extended partitions, and logical drives. It also includes multi-disk volumes created with earlier versions of Windows NT, such as RAID-0, RAID-1, RAID-5, and volume sets. • Windows XP does not support these multi-disk basic volumes. • Before you install Windows XP Professional, back up all volume sets, stripe sets, mirror sets, or parity stripe sets, and then delete them or convert them to dynamic disks.

Dynamic Disk Storage

• Windows XP Professional, Windows 2000, and Windows Server 2003 support dynamic disks. • Disks initialized as dynamic disks are called dynamic disks. • Dynamic disks contain simple volumes, spanned volumes, striped volumes, mirrored volumes, and RAID-5 volumes. With dynamic disks, you can perform disk and volume management without restarting Windows. • Portable computers or computers running Windows XP Home Edition do not support dynamic disks. • You cannot create mirrored volumes or RAID-5 volumes on a computer running Windows XP Home Edition, Windows XP Professional, or Windows XP 64-Bit Edition. • However, you can use a computer running Windows XP Professional to create mirrored or RAID-5 volumes on a remote computer running Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Advanced Server, Windows 2000 Datacenter Server, Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition, Enterprise Edition, or Datacenter Edition, or Windows Vista Starter, Basic, Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, or Ultimate. • The storage type is separate from the file system type. A basic disk or dynamic disk can contain any combination of FAT16, FAT32, or NTFS partitions or volumes. • A disk system can contain any combination of storage types. However, all volumes on the same disk must use the same storage type.

Dynamic Volume

A volume is a storage unit that is created from free space on one or more disks. It can be formatted with a file system and assigned a drive letter. Volumes on dynamic disks can be simple, spanned, mirrored, striped, or RAID-5.

• Simple volume: A simple volume uses available space on a single disk. It can be an area on the disk or can consist of multiple contiguous areas. You can extend a simple volume within the same disk or across multiple disks. If you extend a simple volume across multiple disks, it becomes a spanned volume.

• Spanned volume

• A spanned volume is made up of unallocated space on multiple disks. A spanned volume can be extended across up to 32 disks. Spanned volumes cannot be mirrored and have no fault tolerance.

• Striped volume

• A striped volume is a volume that stores data across two or more physical disks. Data on this type of volume is written sequentially, with equal portions distributed to each physical disk. Striped volumes cannot be mirrored or extended, and they have no fault tolerance. Stripes are also referred to as RAID-0.

• Mirrored volume: A mirrored volume is a fault-tolerant volume that duplicates its data on two physical disks. All data on the volume is copied to the other disk for storage. If one disk fails, the data remains accessible from the remaining disk. Mirrored volumes cannot be expanded. Mirroring is also known as RAID-1.

1. RAID-5 volume

2. A RAID-5 volume is a fault-tolerant striped volume that spans three or more disk drives. Parity (a value that can be used to reconstruct data after a failure) is also striped across the disk drives. If a physical disk fails, the RAID-5 volume can be reconstructed from the remaining data and parity on the other disks.

The system volume contains hardware-specific files required to load Windows, such as Ntldr, Boot.ini, and Ntdetect.com. The system volume can be the boot volume, but it does not have to be.

The boot volume contains the Windows operating system files in the %Systemroot% and %Systemroot%\System32 folders. The boot volume can be the same as the system volume, or it can be different.

How to Manage Dynamic Disks

If you have a Windows computer with dynamic disks, you'll inevitably need to manage or convert them. Here's how to create a volume on a dynamic disk and how to convert a dynamic disk back.

How to Create a Volume on a Dynamic Disk

With Disk Management, you can create volumes on dynamic disks by yourself. Here we will show you how to create a simple volume.

Step 1: Go to This PC > Manage > Disk Management.

2. Right-click on the "Unallocated" space on the dynamic disk, and then select "New Simple Volume".

Step 3: Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the rest of the setup.

The procedure for creating a new volume varies slightly depending on the type of volume that you want to create.

How to Create a Volume on a Dynamic Disk

How to Convert between Dynamic Disk and Basic Disk

Disk Management also enables you to convert basic disks to dynamic disks.

Step 1: Go to This PC > Manage > Disk Management.

Step 2. Right-click the basic disk, and select Convert to Dynamic Disk > OK > Convert.

Step 3: Confirm the action in the pop-up window. Once it's done, you'll have successfully converted your basic disk to a dynamic disk.

However, if you want to convert dynamic disk to basic disk, Disk Management can't help you. Yes, it only enables you to change basic disk to dynamic disk. Therefore, if you want to convert dynamic disk to basic disk, you absolutely need a third party tool. And Partition Master, a professional partition tool, is a good option for you. It allows you to resize/move/clone/check/create/format/delete/explore volume on dynamic disk. With this tool, you can manage your disk better.

How to Recover Lost Data from Dynamic Disk

Data loss can happen on any device, and dynamic disks are no exception. So, what to do when you lose data from a dynamic disk? The powerful Data Recovery Wizard tool is here to help! It allows you to effectively recover lost or deleted data from dynamic disk volumes in Windows 10/8/7 with just three simple steps. To retrieve your precious data using the Data Recovery Wizard tool:

Step 1: Launch the file recovery software on your Windows computer. Select the exact location where you lost your files and click on the "Scan" button.

Select the location to scan

Step 2: The software will immediately start scanning the disk and display the list of deleted files in no time. If you find the file you need during the scan, you can stop the scanning process. To quickly locate the target file, you can use the "File Type Filter".

Step 3: Choose the files you want to recover, such as Word, Excel, PDF, photos, videos, or emails, and then click the "Restore" button. You can browse and select a different location to save your recovered files.

Bottom line

Now you know what dynamic disk is and other related knowledge. Both dynamic disks and basic disks can be used to store data. To better manage computer disks and protect your data, it is recommended to have partition manager and data recovery software installed on your PC. These two tools can handle not only dynamic disks but also basic disks, external hard drives, USB flash drives, SD cards, memory cards, etc. Try them out and you will find how powerful they are.