Dynamic Disk

I somehow have created a 'dynamic disk' instead of a normal disk. No
idea how. This happened when I re-installed my W7 Home Premium from
scratch. Everything is working finenow, and I want to do a Acronis
backup. It has my drive grey'ed out and says it is a dynmaic disk.

Can I somehow convert the disk back to a normal disk? I really do not
want to start this install all over again.
Thanks

Big Fred

wrote:
I somehow have created a 'dynamic disk' instead of a normal disk. No
idea how. This happened when I re-installed my W7 Home Premium from
scratch. Everything is working finenow, and I want to do a Acronis
backup. It has my drive grey'ed out and says it is a dynmaic disk.

Can I somehow convert the disk back to a normal disk? I really do not
want to start this install all over again.
Thanks

Big Fred


You have a choice of methods, but the one I recommend is to use Win7's
own Disk Management;
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials...asic-disk.html

Ed

Roger Dodger.com wrote:

I somehow have created a 'dynamic disk' instead of a normal
disk. No idea how. This happened when I re-installed my W7
Home Premium from scratch. Everything is working finenow, and I
want to do a Acronis backup.

I would use Macrium Reflect (select the option "create an image of
the partition required to backup and restore" and put it on
another physical disk). Also, it should be the first thing you do
after a fresh install before doing anything else. Do the
installation incrementally making copies as you go. In this case,
that way you would have known immediately there was a problem.
There is no point in working hard to develop the installation
without making copies along the way. Making copies helps immensely
with developing a good installation.

On Thu, 10 Apr 2014 21:34:32 +0100, Ed Cryer
wrote:

wrote:
I somehow have created a 'dynamic disk' instead of a normal disk. No
idea how. This happened when I re-installed my W7 Home Premium from
scratch. Everything is working finenow, and I want to do a Acronis
backup. It has my drive grey'ed out and says it is a dynmaic disk.

Can I somehow convert the disk back to a normal disk? I really do not
want to start this install all over again.
Thanks

Big Fred


You have a choice of methods, but the one I recommend is to use Win7's
own Disk Management;
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials...asic-disk.html

Ed

Funny thing is - the disk involved is stated in Disk Management as
basic not dynamic. That seems odd.

Big Fred

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wrote:
On Thu, 10 Apr 2014 21:34:32 +0100, Ed Cryer
wrote:

wrote:
I somehow have created a 'dynamic disk' instead of a normal disk. No
idea how. This happened when I re-installed my W7 Home Premium from
scratch. Everything is working finenow, and I want to do a Acronis
backup. It has my drive grey'ed out and says it is a dynmaic disk.

Can I somehow convert the disk back to a normal disk? I really do not
want to start this install all over again.
Thanks

Big Fred

You have a choice of methods, but the one I recommend is to use Win7's
own Disk Management;
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials...asic-disk.html

Ed

Funny thing is - the disk involved is stated in Disk Management as
basic not dynamic. That seems odd.

Big Fred

---
This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active.
http://www.avast.com


The dynamic information would exist in two places I can think
of off hand.

1) The contents of the MBR. For a dynamic disk, there isn't a regular-looking
partition table. You can check that out, here.

ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/englis...s/PTEDIT32.zip

Partition types are listed here. See the entry for 42 here. If you had
a dynamic disk, the previous tool would note "42" as the first partition type.

http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/partition...n_types-1.html

If running on Vista or later, with PTEDIT32, you'll need to
use "Run as Administrator" on the program, to avoid getting
an "error 5" from it.

2) There is metadata, holding the dynamic disk information, elsewhere
on the disk. The disk usable surface area can be shortened (as offered
to the OS), to protect that table. It's probably about 1MB long or so.
It could be down near the end of the disk, but the Wikipedia article
doesn't go into the details. Acronis might be seeing such a chunk of
info near the end of the disk.

Dynamic disks are not to be confused with "GPT" or GUID partitioning, which
is used with newer 2.2TB drives. Backup utilities may not understand GPT,
and refuse to touch a drive with such on it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_disk

In summary, there are lots of odds n' ends type tools around, for
inspecting hard drives. Disk Management bases its identification,
on the info it actually uses to mount the disks, so it would be
accurate in terms of your ability to access the data on the disk.
A backup utility or partitioning utility, is free to look at
irrelevant stuff, and draw other conclusions. Partition Magic is
particularly good at that (falling over, for the most trivial
issues). the "refusing to work on your stuff" syndrome, is for safety.
Disk tools are a "safety first" design - they would rather exit, than
harm something. CHKDSK excepted of course :-)

Paul

Hi, Paul.

2) There is metadata, holding the dynamic disk information, elsewhere on
the disk. The disk usable surface area can be shortened (as offered to the
OS), to protect that table. It's probably about 1MB long or so. It could
be down near the end of the disk, but the Wikipedia article doesn't go
into the details. Acronis might be seeing such a chunk of info near the
end of the disk.

Reminds me of the 1980's when 20 MB was a BIG HDD and Peter Norton was still
writing the Norton Utilities. DiskEdit was one of my favorites. I learned
a lot from using those utilities, with one hand on the keyboard and the
other on the program documentation - and both eyes on the bits and bytes on
my disks. In Oklahoma, we had lots of thunderstorms, and lightning strikes
in the neighborhood cost me lots of lost data and recovery time.

When lightning zapped power lines and got to the hard disk, the most likely
place for the read/write heads to be was right over the directory tracks
and/or the FAT, which was at the front of the disk, along with the system
startup files. (I've spent many tedious hours re-building FATs, bit by bit.
No fun, especially in FAT12!) So I learned to use DE to copy the first
dozen or so tracks to the far end of the disk, then mark those destination
tracks as BAD so that I would not accidentally overwrite them. After a
lightning strike made the disk unbootable, I'd boot from a floppy (remember
those?) and use DE to copy those tracks back to the front of the disk where
they belonged. Then my computer was OK again. ;)

I miss DiskEdit! But I probably couldn't use it on today's humongous NTFS
disks, anyhow.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX

Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-2010)
Windows Live Mail 2012 (Build 16.4.3522.0110) in Win8.1 Pro with Media
Center


"Paul" wrote in message ...

wrote:
On Thu, 10 Apr 2014 21:34:32 +0100, Ed Cryer
wrote:

wrote:
I somehow have created a 'dynamic disk' instead of a normal disk. No
idea how. This happened when I re-installed my W7 Home Premium from
scratch. Everything is working finenow, and I want to do a Acronis
backup. It has my drive grey'ed out and says it is a dynmaic disk.

Can I somehow convert the disk back to a normal disk? I really do not
want to start this install all over again.
Thanks

Big Fred

You have a choice of methods, but the one I recommend is to use Win7's
own Disk Management;
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials...asic-disk.html

Ed

Funny thing is - the disk involved is stated in Disk Management as
basic not dynamic. That seems odd.

Big Fred

---
This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus
protection is active.
http://www.avast.com


The dynamic information would exist in two places I can think
of off hand.

1) The contents of the MBR. For a dynamic disk, there isn't a
regular-looking
partition table. You can check that out, here.

ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/englis...s/PTEDIT32.zip

Partition types are listed here. See the entry for 42 here. If you had
a dynamic disk, the previous tool would note "42" as the first partition
type.

http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/partition...n_types-1.html

If running on Vista or later, with PTEDIT32, you'll need to
use "Run as Administrator" on the program, to avoid getting
an "error 5" from it.

2) There is metadata, holding the dynamic disk information, elsewhere
on the disk. The disk usable surface area can be shortened (as offered
to the OS), to protect that table. It's probably about 1MB long or so.
It could be down near the end of the disk, but the Wikipedia article
doesn't go into the details. Acronis might be seeing such a chunk of
info near the end of the disk.

Dynamic disks are not to be confused with "GPT" or GUID partitioning, which
is used with newer 2.2TB drives. Backup utilities may not understand GPT,
and refuse to touch a drive with such on it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_disk

In summary, there are lots of odds n' ends type tools around, for
inspecting hard drives. Disk Management bases its identification,
on the info it actually uses to mount the disks, so it would be
accurate in terms of your ability to access the data on the disk.
A backup utility or partitioning utility, is free to look at
irrelevant stuff, and draw other conclusions. Partition Magic is
particularly good at that (falling over, for the most trivial
issues). the "refusing to work on your stuff" syndrome, is for safety.
Disk tools are a "safety first" design - they would rather exit, than
harm something. CHKDSK excepted of course :-)

Paul

R. C. White wrote:
Hi, Paul.

2) There is metadata, holding the dynamic disk information, elsewhere
on the disk. The disk usable surface area can be shortened (as offered
to the OS), to protect that table. It's probably about 1MB long or
so. It could be down near the end of the disk, but the Wikipedia
article doesn't go into the details. Acronis might be seeing such a
chunk of info near the end of the disk.

Reminds me of the 1980's when 20 MB was a BIG HDD and Peter Norton was
still writing the Norton Utilities. DiskEdit was one of my favorites.
I learned a lot from using those utilities, with one hand on the
keyboard and the other on the program documentation - and both eyes on
the bits and bytes on my disks. In Oklahoma, we had lots of
thunderstorms, and lightning strikes in the neighborhood cost me lots of
lost data and recovery time.

When lightning zapped power lines and got to the hard disk, the most
likely place for the read/write heads to be was right over the directory
tracks and/or the FAT, which was at the front of the disk, along with
the system startup files. (I've spent many tedious hours re-building
FATs, bit by bit. No fun, especially in FAT12!) So I learned to use DE
to copy the first dozen or so tracks to the far end of the disk, then
mark those destination tracks as BAD so that I would not accidentally
overwrite them. After a lightning strike made the disk unbootable, I'd
boot from a floppy (remember those?) and use DE to copy those tracks
back to the front of the disk where they belonged. Then my computer was
OK again. ;)

I miss DiskEdit! But I probably couldn't use it on today's humongous
NTFS disks, anyhow.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX

Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-2010)
Windows Live Mail 2012 (Build 16.4.3522.0110) in Win8.1 Pro with Media
Center

I had some kind of disk editor in Win98, but don't have it
on anything else here. It would probably have been limited
to identifying FAT stuff, and not touched the NTFS.

And I don't actually have a good editor for usage now. What I
do instead, is snip out pieces of disk with "dd", then pop a
piece into hexedit for a look around. It's a pathetic way to
work, but I can find stuff that way. I found RAID metadata
on a RAID array that way. (Snip out 1GB chunks from the
end of the disk, and pop them one at a time into the
hex editor.)

Paul

On Thu, 10 Apr 2014 22:16:05 +0000 (UTC), John Doe
wrote:

Roger Dodger.com wrote:

I somehow have created a 'dynamic disk' instead of a normal
disk. No idea how. This happened when I re-installed my W7
Home Premium from scratch. Everything is working finenow, and I
want to do a Acronis backup.

I would use Macrium Reflect (select the option "create an image of
the partition required to backup and restore" and put it on
another physical disk). Also, it should be the first thing you do
after a fresh install before doing anything else. Do the
installation incrementally making copies as you go. In this case,
that way you would have known immediately there was a problem.
There is no point in working hard to develop the installation
without making copies along the way. Making copies helps immensely
with developing a good installation.


Why would Acronis say the drive is 'dynamic', but W7 Management say
it is 'basic'? That makes me pause.

Big Fred

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http://www.avast.com

On Fri, 11 Apr 2014 07:04:34 -0400, wrote:

On Thu, 10 Apr 2014 22:16:05 +0000 (UTC), John Doe
wrote:

Roger Dodger.com wrote:

I somehow have created a 'dynamic disk' instead of a normal
disk. No idea how. This happened when I re-installed my W7
Home Premium from scratch. Everything is working finenow, and I
want to do a Acronis backup.

I would use Macrium Reflect (select the option "create an image of
the partition required to backup and restore" and put it on
another physical disk). Also, it should be the first thing you do
after a fresh install before doing anything else. Do the
installation incrementally making copies as you go. In this case,
that way you would have known immediately there was a problem.
There is no point in working hard to develop the installation
without making copies along the way. Making copies helps immensely
with developing a good installation.


Why would Acronis say the drive is 'dynamic', but W7 Management say
it is 'basic'? That makes me pause.

Big Fred


Something must really be wrong. I tried 'Partition Wizard 4.2 Free'
suggested earlier, but I can't do the step that says to click on the
dynamic disk because that menu option is gray 'ed out. So naturally I
cannot select 'convert dynamic to basic disk' stated in the
instructions. This is another indication that the drive may not
really be dynamic? What to do, what to do....

Thanks

Big Fred

---
This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active.
http://www.avast.com

On Fri, 11 Apr 2014 07:27:41 -0400, wrote:

On Fri, 11 Apr 2014 07:04:34 -0400, wrote:

On Thu, 10 Apr 2014 22:16:05 +0000 (UTC), John Doe
wrote:

Roger Dodger.com wrote:

I somehow have created a 'dynamic disk' instead of a normal
disk. No idea how. This happened when I re-installed my W7
Home Premium from scratch. Everything is working finenow, and I
want to do a Acronis backup.

I would use Macrium Reflect (select the option "create an image of
the partition required to backup and restore" and put it on
another physical disk). Also, it should be the first thing you do
after a fresh install before doing anything else. Do the
installation incrementally making copies as you go. In this case,
that way you would have known immediately there was a problem.
There is no point in working hard to develop the installation
without making copies along the way. Making copies helps immensely
with developing a good installation.


Why would Acronis say the drive is 'dynamic', but W7 Management say
it is 'basic'? That makes me pause.

Big Fred


Something must really be wrong. I tried 'Partition Wizard 4.2 Free'
suggested earlier, but I can't do the step that says to click on the
dynamic disk because that menu option is gray 'ed out. So naturally I
cannot select 'convert dynamic to basic disk' stated in the
instructions. This is another indication that the drive may not
really be dynamic? What to do, what to do....

Thanks

Big Fred

This is how the drive looks:
FILE SYS CAP USED UNUSED STATUS TYPE
FAT32 100MB 21MB 79MB ACTIVE GPT (EFI SYS PARTITION)
OTHER 128MB 128MB 0MB NONE GPT (EFI RES PARTITION)
NTFS 297GB 182GB 115GB SYSTEM GPT (DATA PARTITION)

???

Thanks for any help.

Big Fred

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This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active.
http://www.avast.com

roger dodger.com wrote:

Something must really be wrong. I tried 'Partition Wizard 4.2
Free' suggested earlier, but I can't do the step that says to
click on the dynamic disk because that menu option is gray 'ed
out. So naturally I cannot select 'convert dynamic to basic
disk' stated in the instructions. This is another indication
that the drive may not really be dynamic? What to do, what to
do....

When installing Windows... Use Macrium Reflect. Select the option
"create an image of the partition required to backup and restore"
and put it on another physical disk. That should be the first
thing you do after a fresh install before doing anything else. You
should make copies as you develop the installation. Definitely
make copies before each difficult part of the installation. In
this case, that way you would have known immediately there was a
problem. There is no point in working hard to develop an
installation without making copies along the way. Making copies is
critical for developing a good installation.

On Fri, 11 Apr 2014 07:04:34 -0400, wrote:

On Thu, 10 Apr 2014 22:16:05 +0000 (UTC), John Doe
wrote:

Roger Dodger.com wrote:

I somehow have created a 'dynamic disk' instead of a normal
disk. No idea how. This happened when I re-installed my W7
Home Premium from scratch. Everything is working finenow, and I
want to do a Acronis backup.

I would use Macrium Reflect (select the option "create an image of
the partition required to backup and restore" and put it on
another physical disk). Also, it should be the first thing you do
after a fresh install before doing anything else. Do the
installation incrementally making copies as you go. In this case,
that way you would have known immediately there was a problem.
There is no point in working hard to develop the installation
without making copies along the way. Making copies helps immensely
with developing a good installation.

Why would Acronis say the drive is 'dynamic', but W7 Management say
it is 'basic'? That makes me pause.

Possibly a bug in Acronis.

I happen to have little faith in Acronis, but it all stems from one bad
experience several years ago, so probably it's really prejudice at this
point :-)

But still, it can be a bug in Acronis.

You could download another free partition or backup program or two and
see if they agree with Windows and Partition Wizard vs. Acronis. EaseUS
comes to mind, and Macrium Free has already been mentioned.

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

wrote:
On Fri, 11 Apr 2014 07:27:41 -0400, wrote:

On Fri, 11 Apr 2014 07:04:34 -0400, wrote:

On Thu, 10 Apr 2014 22:16:05 +0000 (UTC), John Doe
wrote:

Roger Dodger.com wrote:

I somehow have created a 'dynamic disk' instead of a normal
disk. No idea how. This happened when I re-installed my W7
Home Premium from scratch. Everything is working finenow, and I
want to do a Acronis backup.
I would use Macrium Reflect (select the option "create an image of
the partition required to backup and restore" and put it on
another physical disk). Also, it should be the first thing you do
after a fresh install before doing anything else. Do the
installation incrementally making copies as you go. In this case,
that way you would have known immediately there was a problem.
There is no point in working hard to develop the installation
without making copies along the way. Making copies helps immensely
with developing a good installation.

Why would Acronis say the drive is 'dynamic', but W7 Management say
it is 'basic'? That makes me pause.

Big Fred

Something must really be wrong. I tried 'Partition Wizard 4.2 Free'
suggested earlier, but I can't do the step that says to click on the
dynamic disk because that menu option is gray 'ed out. So naturally I
cannot select 'convert dynamic to basic disk' stated in the
instructions. This is another indication that the drive may not
really be dynamic? What to do, what to do....

Thanks

Big Fred

This is how the drive looks:
FILE SYS CAP USED UNUSED STATUS TYPE
FAT32 100MB 21MB 79MB ACTIVE GPT (EFI SYS PARTITION)
OTHER 128MB 128MB 0MB NONE GPT (EFI RES PARTITION)
NTFS 297GB 182GB 115GB SYSTEM GPT (DATA PARTITION)

???

Thanks for any help.

Big Fred


GPT is GUID Partition Table, a method allowing larger than 2.2TB
hard drives, to be used for booting. GPT is an alternative to MBR,
but not supported in all OSes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table

GPT is not the same thing as dynamic disk. And I don't know if
you can overlay a dynamic disk on top of GPT or not.

Not every backup tool or disk management tool, will understand
GPT. Some will understand just MBR, some MBR + GPT. The very
latest version of Macrium, now understands (can back up) GPT.

I can't really tell you, what percentage of disk tools
handle GPT.

When you accept an exotic format, be prepared for the fallout.

Paul

wrote:

On Fri, 11 Apr 2014 07:27:41 -0400, wrote:

On Fri, 11 Apr 2014 07:04:34 -0400, wrote:

On Thu, 10 Apr 2014 22:16:05 +0000 (UTC), John Doe
wrote:

Roger Dodger.com wrote:

I somehow have created a 'dynamic disk' instead of a normal
disk. No idea how. This happened when I re-installed my W7
Home Premium from scratch. Everything is working finenow, and I
want to do a Acronis backup.

I would use Macrium Reflect (select the option "create an image
of the partition required to backup and restore" and put it on
another physical disk). Also, it should be the first thing you
do after a fresh install before doing anything else. Do the
installation incrementally making copies as you go. In this
case, that way you would have known immediately there was a
problem. There is no point in working hard to develop the
installation without making copies along the way. Making copies
helps immensely with developing a good installation.


Why would Acronis say the drive is 'dynamic', but W7 Management
say it is 'basic'? That makes me pause.

Big Fred


Something must really be wrong. I tried 'Partition Wizard 4.2 Free'
suggested earlier, but I can't do the step that says to click on
the dynamic disk because that menu option is gray 'ed out. So
naturally I cannot select 'convert dynamic to basic disk' stated in
the instructions. This is another indication that the drive may not
really be dynamic? What to do, what to do....

Thanks

Big Fred

This is how the drive looks:
FILE SYS CAP USED UNUSED STATUS TYPE
FAT32 100MB 21MB 79MB ACTIVE GPT (EFI SYS PARTITION)
OTHER 128MB 128MB 0MB NONE GPT (EFI RES PARTITION)
NTFS 297GB 182GB 115GB SYSTEM GPT (DATA PARTITION)

???

Thanks for any help.

Big Fred

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Did you use the bootable CD? If not, visit the following link;

http://www.partitionwizard.com/parti...otable-cd.html

This is new with Partition Wizard;

http://www.partitionwizard.com/help/...-MBR-disk.html

I have no hands-on experience with it, but Partition Wizard has a good
reputation and it should be well tested before they would put it in a
release version; if you really have a GPT disk problem.

--
Sir_George