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 an LDM database to manage its volumes.

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

If you have multiple dynamic disks, each disk stores this information. This means that all dynamic disks are interdependent. This interdependence is what causes a “lost” disk to appear in Disk Management 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. Here's how it looks:

The blue area at the beginning of a dynamic disk is the MBR, which contains the information about the disk's partition table. This partition table is different from that of a basic disk. Its main purpose is to let Windows and other disk managers know that this is a dynamic disk, not an unformatted disk. The blue area at the end of a dynamic disk is the LDM database.

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

Microsoft's Windows operating system provides two types of disk storage: Basic disks 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 disks and Dynamic disks:

Basic Disk Storage

• Basic storage uses the 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 that has been initialized for basic storage is called a basic disk. • A basic disk contains basic volumes, such as primary partitions, extended partitions, and logical drives. In addition, basic disks can contain multi-disk volumes, such as spanned volumes, striped volumes, mirrored volumes, and RAID-5 volumes, created with Windows NT 4.0 or earlier. • Windows XP does not support these multi-disk basic volumes. • Before installing Windows XP Professional, you must back up all volume sets, striped volumes, mirrored volumes, and RAID-5 volumes, 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. • A disk that is initialized for use as a dynamic disk is called a dynamic disk. • Dynamic disks contain dynamic volumes such as simple volumes, spanned volumes, striped volumes, mirrored volumes, and RAID-5 volumes. You can perform disk and volume management operations on dynamic disks without restarting Windows. • Portable computers or computers running Windows XP Home Edition do not support dynamic disks. • You cannot create mirrored 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 made up of free space on one or more disks. It can be formatted with a file system and assigned a drive letter. On dynamic disks, volumes can be Simple, Spanned, Mirrored, Striped, or RAID-5.

• Simple volume: A simple volume uses available space on a single disk. It can be a single area on the disk or can span 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.

• Stripe: A stripe is created from the combined available space on two or more disks. You can expand a striped volume to a maximum of 32 disks. A striped volume cannot be mirrored and does not provide fault tolerance.

• Striped volume

• Data on a striped volume is spread across two or more physical disks. Data is alternated and evenly distributed among the physical disks. A striped volume cannot be mirrored or extended, and it does not provide fault tolerance. Striped volumes are also known as RAID-0.

• Mirror volume A mirror volume is a fault-tolerant volume that stores data on two physical disks. The data on the volume is copied to the other disk. If one disk fails, you can still access the data from the remaining disk. You cannot expand a mirror volume. A mirror is also called RAID-1.

1. RAID-5 volume

2. A RAID-5 volume is a fault-tolerant volume that stripes data across an array of three or more disks. Parity (a calculation used to reconstruct data after a failure) is also striped across the disk array. If a physical disk fails, the section of the RAID-5 volume that was on that disk can be recreated from the remaining data and parity information.

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

How to Manage Dynamic Disks

If you are using dynamic disks on a Windows computer, you will inevitably need to manage or convert the dynamic disk. Here we will show you how to create a volume on a dynamic disk and how to convert a dynamic disk.

How to Create a Volume on a Dynamic Disk

With "Disk Management," you can create volumes on dynamic disks. This article will show you how to create a simple volume.

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

Step 2. Right-click on the “Unallocated” space on the dynamic disk, and select “New Simple Volume”.

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

The method for creating a new volume will vary slightly depending on the type of volume you want to create.

How to Create a Volume on a Dynamic Disk

How to Convert Between Dynamic Disk and Basic Disk

Disk Management can also convert a basic disk to a dynamic disk.

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 will 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 allows you to change basic disk to dynamic disk. Therefore, if you want to convert dynamic disk to basic disk, you definitely need a third party tool. Partition Master, a professional partition tool, is a good choice for you. It enables you to resize/move/clone/check/create/format/delete/explore volumes 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 valuable 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 the "Scan" button.

Step 2: The software will immediately start scanning the disk and display the deleted files in a short while. If you find the required file during the scan, you can stop it anytime. To quickly locate the target file, use the 'File Type Filter.'

Select the files to recover

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

Bottom line

Now you have known what dynamic disk is and something related to it. Both dynamic disk and basic disk can be used to store data. To manage computer disks and protect data better, it is recommended to install disk partition management and data recovery software on the computer. These two tools can help you deal with not only dynamic disk but also basic disk, external hard drive, USB flash drive, SD card, memory card, etc. Try it and you will find how powerful it is.