Converting to dynamic disk?

[TorinoGT24]

I just got a new scsi drive and I have heard that the performance is MUCH better when you convert the hard disk to a dynamic disk on windows xp. I am not really familiar with what this does, so I'm not sure if I should. Can anyone help me out and tell me the benefits of performing this task? Any help is appreciated. Thanks! Basically, I just don't want to screw up my new drive

-Collin-

 

[EeyoreX]

Here is how to do it.

Having said that, dynamic disk setups can not be read by DOS and some file utilities have trouble with them too. If you bork your Windows install, and don't have another machine with Windows 2000/XP installed on it, you won't be getting your data back, as other OSes can't access the data. Dynamic disks can not contain partitons or logical drives. I don't see how a single drive will benefit from this, as a dynamic volume is best for spanning two or more drives to appear as one large drive (kind of like a poor-mans (software) RAID). You can convert to a dynamic disk with data on the drive, but reverting to a "basic disk" destroys all data.

\Dan

 

[helpme]

From SR

To cut a long story short, in WinXP MS corrected a bug in Win2k that caused write-thru flags to be ignored. This bug could have caused possible data loss (if the data hadn't been written to the drive and the power went out for example).

Unfortunately the correction of this bug also affects Windows Explorer. In many circumstances, when using SCSI drives, file copies aren't cached, and performance is extremely slow when compared to pre SP3 Win2k. Win2k SP3 and SP4 also have the XP "problem".

There is a possible solution (given that MS is not very forthcoming with one themselves). That is a program called casfilter, created by cas, a member of the SR forums. Use it at your own risk.

Please note that Win 2003 Server has a fix for this SCSI performance problem, under Device Manager->Select the drive->Right click->Properties->Policies tab: There is a setting to "enable write caching on the disk", and a further option to "Enable advanced performance". A machine with SCSI drives using the advanced performance checkbox is noticeably "snappier" than one using winXP.

Apparently MS will add this option to winXP SP2, however for now 2003 Server or win2k SP2 is the best option for SCSI drive users.