Windows – Basic Disk and Dynamic Disk vs. Primary Partition and Extended Partition and Logical Partition

hard drivepartitioningwindows

I am trying to understand how disk partitioning works. I have learned that first you create a Partition Table, and then you partition your disk the way you are allowed in the Partition Table that you specified.

If you select the MBR Partition Table, the you can create 4 Primary Partitions, or 3 Primary Partitions and 1 extended Partiton, and the extended partition can be used to create 28 Logical Partitions (not sure about this number).

But now I am introduced to the terms Basic Disk and Dynamic Disk, what are these terms, are they Microsoft specific or something?

Best Answer

Basic Disk and Dynamic Disk, what are these terms, are they Microsoft specific?

A short summary follows. See the source link for more details.

Basic Disks

Basic disks are the storage types most often used with Windows. The term basic disk refers to a disk that contains partitions, such as primary partitions and logical drives, and these in turn are usually formatted with a file system to become a volume for file storage.

Basic disks provide a simple storage solution that can accommodate a useful array of changing storage requirement scenarios. Basic disks also support clustered disks, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 1394 disks, and universal serial bus (USB) removable drives.

For backward compatibility, basic disks usually use the same Master Boot Record (MBR) partition style as the disks used by the Microsoft MS-DOS operating system and all versions of Windows but can also support GUID Partition Table (GPT) partitions on systems that support it. For more information about MBR and GPT partition styles, see the Partition Styles section.

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Dynamic Disks

Dynamic disks provide features that basic disks do not, such as the ability to create volumes that span multiple disks (spanned and striped volumes) and the ability to create fault-tolerant volumes (mirrored and RAID-5 volumes). Like basic disks, dynamic disks can use the MBR or GPT partition styles on systems that support both. All volumes on dynamic disks are known as dynamic volumes.

Dynamic disks offer greater flexibility for volume management because they use a database to track information about dynamic volumes on the disk and about other dynamic disks in the computer. Because each dynamic disk in a computer stores a replica of the dynamic disk database, for example, a corrupted dynamic disk database can repair one dynamic disk by using the database on another dynamic disk. The location of the database is determined by the partition style of the disk. On MBR partitions, the database is contained in the last 1 megabyte (MB) of the disk. On GPT partitions, the database is contained in a 1-MB reserved (hidden) partition.

Dynamic disks are a separate form of volume management that allows volumes to have noncontiguous extents on one or more physical disks. Dynamic disks and volumes rely on the Logical Disk Manager (LDM) and Virtual Disk Service (VDS) and their associated features. These features enable you to perform tasks such as converting basic disks into dynamic disks, and creating fault-tolerant volumes. To encourage the use of dynamic disks, multi-partition volume support was removed from basic disks, and is now exclusively supported on dynamic disks.

Source Basic and Dynamic Disks

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