Win2k, New Disk Drive - How to Clone Partition, What the hell is a dynamic disk?

[Jason251]

Hello

I've been really happy with Windows2000 and have had no problems with it so far, and have found it easy to use. But recently I have bought a new hard disk drive which is smaller, but faster than my old one. I want to use the new one for the OS and Apps, and the old one for all my files and backup of OS. All this business with simple volumes and dynamic disks, and basic disks, logical drives etc. is really doing my head in. Need some help.

Configuration:
Primary master: New Quantum 30Gb HDD (empty, currently 'simple' and 'dynamic')
Primary slave: TDK burner
Secondary master: Old Maxtor 40Gb HDD (Two partitions, OS & Apps, all my stuff)
Secondary slave: Hitachi DVD-ROM

Firstly, is this a good config? Should the HDDs both ne on the Primary channel? I wanted the CD-burner and DVD-ROM on seperate channels for disc-disc copying.

Now the big problem that I have:

Currently the Maxtor is what boots, obviously. It used to be the primary master, but I moved it to fit the new drive.

I thought that it would be a simple operation of just copying the main OS & Apps partiton to the new new drive, then making that one bootable in the BIOS.

Well it's quite as easy as that, is it?
I can't format it as a basic disk in Disk Management, only as a dynamic disk. Can you only have one basic disk? Can you make the dynamic disk you main disk? Can you make partitions on a dynamic disk? Why is my dynamic disk considered simple?

I've tried using Partition Magic, which refuses to have anything to do with dynamic disks. I've got a Norton Ghost floppy, which let me clone the OS partition to the new drive. I can't make the new drive a basic disk. I don't know what is going on.

This is really confusing me, and making me feel really dumb. I considered myself as a bit of a power user until all this.

I would really appreciate some explanation to what I'm doing wrong.

Cheers!

Jason.

 

[AndyHui]

A new storage type has been defined with the introduction of Windows 2000, and exposed in the new Logical Disk Management snap-in; previous versions of Windows NT used only basic storage:

Basic storage uses normal partition tables supported by all versions of Windows, MS-DOS, and Windows NT. A disk initialized for basic storage is called a basic disk. It can hold primary partitions, extended partitions, and logical drives.

Basic volumes include partitions and logical drives, as well as volumes created using Windows NT 4.0 or earlier, such as volume sets, stripe sets, mirror sets, and stripe sets with parity. In Windows 2000, these volumes are called spanned volumes, striped volumes, mirrored volumes, and RAID-5 volumes, respectively.


Dynamic storage is supported by Windows 2000. A disk initialized for dynamic storage is called a dynamic disk. It can hold simple volumes, spanned volumes, mirrored volumes, striped volumes, and RAID-5 volumes. With dynamic storage, you can perform disk and volume management without having to restart the operating system.


Upgrading a disk from basic to dynamic can be done from the Disk Management MMC Snap-in. In Programs, go to select Disk Management from Administrative Tools. You may be prompted to upgrade your disks or you can right-click the disk to upgrade it.

WARNING: Upgrading a disk to dynamic storage will render the entire disk unreadable to operating systems other than Windows 2000. This is a one-way process. In order to change back to basic disk format, the drive must be repartitioned.

Storage types are separate from the file system type; a basic or dynamic disk can contain any combination of FAT16, FAT32, NTFS v4.0, NTFS v5.0 partitions or volumes.

Windows 2000 accommodates both basic and dynamic storage. A disk system can contain any combination of storage types. However, all volumes on the same disk must use the same storage type.

On a basic disk, a partition is a portion of the disk that functions as a physically separate unit. On a dynamic disk, storage is divided into volumes instead of partitions.



MORE INFORMATION
Dynamic Storage Terms:

A volume is a storage unit made 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 have any of the following layouts: simple, spanned, mirrored, striped, or RAID-5.


A simple volume uses free space from a single disk. It can be a single region on a disk or consist of multiple, concatenated regions. A simple volume can be extended within the same disk or onto additional disks. If a simple volume is extended across multiple disks, it becomes a spanned volume.


A spanned volume is made from free disk space that is linked together from multiple disks (up to a maximum of 32 disks). A spanned volume can be extended onto additional disks. A spanned volume cannot be mirrored.


A mirrored volume is a fault-tolerant volume whose data is duplicated on two physical disks. All of the data on one volume is copied to another disk to provide data redundancy. If one of the disks fails, the data can still be accessed from the remaining disk. A mirrored volume cannot be extended. Mirroring is also known as RAID-1.


A striped volume is a volume whose data is interleaved across two or more physical disks. The data on this type of volume is allocated alternately and evenly to each of the physical disks. A striped volume cannot be mirrored or extended. Striping is also known as RAID-0.


A RAID-5 volume is a fault-tolerant volume whose data is striped across an array of three or more disks. Parity (a calculated value that can be used to reconstruct data after a failure) is also striped across the disk array. If a physical disk fails, the portion of the RAID-5 volume that was on that failed disk can be recreated from the remaining data and the parity. A RAID-5 volume cannot be mirrored or extended.


The system volume contains the hardware-specific files (Ntldr, Boot.ini, Ntdetect.com) needed to load Windows NT.


The boot volume contains Windows NT operating system files that are located in the %Systemroot% and %Systemroot%\System32 folder.


NOTE: Windows 2000 Advanced Server and Datacenter server shipped from Microsoft do not provide support for dynamic disks in a server cluster (MSCS) environment. The Volume Manager for Windows 2000 add-on product from Veritas can be used to add the dynamic disk features to a server cluster. When the Veritas Volume Manager product is installed on a cluster, Veritas should be the first point of support for cluster issues.

From Microsoft

 

[Jason251]

Thanks for the response.
But I'm even more confused now.

I've decided that I don't want to use dynamic disks. I'm happy with basic ones.
I'm not entirely sure of the benefit.

All I want to do is tranfer (preferably clone) my OS and Apps partition to my new HDD. Make other partitions on that disk and use the other old HDD for storage, preferably also with partitions and as logical drives.

How would I accomplish this? Why does Norton Ghost refuse to do this?
Why would I choose either of the drives to be dynamic? Benefits?

Thanks for help.

 

[AndyHui]

Put it this way: if you dual boot, you can't use a dynamic disk. The conversion is one way only, so you will need to FDISK if you don't like it. I haven't needed it.

 

[Techwhore]

To clone the OS, you need Norton Ghost 2001 and SYSPrep. Use SYSPrep first to remove the SIDs (Security Identification numbers), which w2k assigns to everything, then use Ghost to create and apply the image.

If you're using NTFS volumns, you'll need to get either Disk Imaging Pro or Norton Ghost Enterprise because Ghost 2001 can read NTFS partitions but can't write to them.

As far as the dynamic disks go, some of the beneftis include:

Basic disk can only have 4 partitions whereas dynamic disks can have many more, if not infinite.

Dynmaic volumns can be expanded over multiple disks, so two hard drives can essential become one and increase capacity (this is NOT a form of RAID)

I'm sure that i'm leaving many benefits out, but the normal user doesn't need dynamic volumns. Keep in mind that you can convert from Basic disk to Dynamic disks, but I don't think it works the other way.

 

[Jason251]

Thanks a lot.
Should be able to sort this out now.

Cheers!