Here's a cut Paste from an article I found:
--- Start ---
Basic Disk Storage
--
Basic storage uses normal partition tables 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 initialized for basic storage is called a basic disk. A
basic disk contains basic volumes, such as primary partitions, extended
partitions, and logical drives. Additionally, basic volumes include
multidisk volumes that are created by using Windows NT 4.0 or earlier, such
as volume sets, stripe sets, mirror sets, and stripe sets with parity.
Windows XP does not support these multidisk basic volumes. Any volume sets,
stripe sets, mirror sets, or stripe sets with parity must be backed up and
deleted or converted to dynamic disks before you install Windows XP
Professional.
Dynamic Disk Storage
Dynamic storage is supported in Windows XP Professional, Windows 2000 and
Windows Server 2003. A disk initialized for dynamic storage is called a
dynamic disk. A dynamic disk contains dynamic volumes, such as simple
volumes, spanned volumes, striped volumes, mirrored volumes, and RAID-5
volumes. With dynamic storage, you can perform disk and volume management
without the need to restart Windows.
Note: Dynamic disks are not supported on portable computers or on Windows XP
Home Edition-based computers.
You cannot create mirrored volumes or RAID-5 volumes on Windows XP Home
Edition, Windows XP Professional, or Windows XP 64-Bit Edition-based
computers. However, you can use a Windows XP Professional-based computer to
create a mirrored or RAID-5 volume on remote computers that are running
Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Advanced Server, or Windows 2000
Datacenter Server, or the Standard, Enterprise and Data Center versions of
Windows Server 2003.
Storage types are separate from the file system type. A basic 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.
--- End ---
I hope this answers it.
Now for my experience with them. If it is going to be an external it is not
a good idea to Change it to a Dynamic Volume due to hassles with getting it
to work with other computers.
Regards,
Tim Lider
Sr. Data Recovery Specialist
Advanced Data Solutions, LLC
http://www.adv-data.com
-Original Message-
From: hardware-boun...@hardwaregroup.com [mailto:hardware-
boun...@hardwaregroup.com] On Behalf Of Thane Sherrington
Sent: Thursday, January 07, 2010 6:11 AM
To: hardware@hardwaregroup.com
Subject: [H] Dynamic vs Basic disks
Is there any advantage to creating a dynamic disk in XP if you aren't
going to span disks?
T
