What Are the Disadvantages of a Dynamic Disk?

Is the dynamic disk bad?

"On a fresh installation of Windows 8 (4 primary partitions), I’ve mistakenly converted the disk to dynamic from Disk Management. Then, what are the disadvantages of a dynamic disk? Unable to install other OS on other partitions or any other problems?"

- A question from answers.microsoft.com

What’s the dynamic disk?

The dynamic disk, similar to the basic disk, is a type of hard drive configuration but contains dynamic volume. Only Windows 2000 and later version can recognize a dynamic disk. Like a basic disk, a dynamic disk can use the MBR or GPT partition styles on systems that support both. Sometimes, people may mistakenly convert a basic disk to a dynamic disk from Disk Management and are worried about whether it affects the performance of their PCs. So, here, you’ll learn about both the advantaged and disadvantages of the dynamic disk.

● Disadvantages

Is a dynamic disk better than basic? Everything has 2 sides. Although a dynamic disk has many virtues over a basic disk, it still suffers from some disadvantages. For example, it’s not possible to install dual systems and you cannot install or reinstall the OS on any volume except the current system volume. In addition, after moving the dynamic disk from one PC to another, it won’t go online automatically after startup. Instead, you have to go to Disk Management and select “Online”, “Activate”, or “Import external disk” beforehand.

● Advantages

A dynamic disk contains many features that a basic disk doesn’t have and better than a basic disk in many aspects.

Variety of volumes
Dynamic disk is bale to create volumes that span multiple hard disks (spanned and striped volumes) and to create fault-tolerant volumes (mirrored and RAID-5 volumes).

More volumes supported
Regardless of the partition styles (MBR or GPT), you can create at most 2000 volumes on a dynamic disk, although the recommended number of dynamic volumes is 32 or less. By comparison, a basic disk in MBR only supports at most 4 primary partitions or 3 primary partitions plus one extended partition.

Extend volume with more flexibility
From Disk Management, people can extend a dynamic volume with unallocated space whether they’re adjacent to each other; however, a basic volume can be extended only when the unallocated space is right next to it.

How to convert a dynamic disk to a basic disk in 2 ways?

If you can’t live with the disadvantages of a dynamic disk, then, your best option is to make a conversion between the 2 types of disks. But how to convert a dynamic disk to basic properly? Generally, there’re 2 ways out there – a traditional way and an optimum way.

Way 1. Convert a dynamic disk to a basic disk by deleting all volumes

As the tile suggests, in this way, you have to delete all volumes on a dynamic disk first before being able to convert it to a basic disk. Thus, you’re supposed to make a backup first in case of any data loss.

1. Right-click on "This PC" from the desktop and select "Manage".

2. Select "Disk Management" under “Storage” to launch Disk Management.

3. Right-click on every dynamic volume and select "Delete Volume".

4. Wait the deletion completes, right-click on the unallocated space and select "Convert to Basic Disk".

Way 2. Convert a dynamic disk to a basic disk without deleting anything

As you can see, in Way 1, to convert a dynamic disk to basic, you have to delete all volumes on it which inevitably causes data loss. Meanwhile, if the dynamic disk is a system disk, the option “Delete Volume” will be greyed out. Fortunately, there’s an alternative way.

With AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional – the most powerful disk manager on the market - you can directly convert a dynamic disk to a basic disk without deleting volumes with one of its practical feature s– Dynamic Disk Converter. It supports all Windows versions including Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7/Vista/XP/2000.

As there’re some disadvantages of a dynamic disk, why not try reverting it to the basic disk with the ultimate disk management program?

Step 1. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional and wait until all disks along with their partitions are recognized by the program.

Step 2. Click “Convert” in the top toolbar, and choose “Dynamic Disk Converter”.

Step 3. In the next window, select Method 1 "Convert a dynamic disk back to basic disk" and click on "Next".

Step 4. Select the dynamic disk to convert and click on "Next".

Step 5. When the conversion is complete, hit "OK" to reboot your PC. Later, you can check whether the dynamic disk has been converted to a basic disk.

Conclusion

What are the disadvantages of a dynamic disk? Now, you must’ve learnt about the features of this type of disk as well as its defects. If you cannot stand the inconvenience with the dynamic disk, you can choose to convert it to a basic disk with the help of AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional without deleting any volumes. Besides the Dynamic Disk Converter, the AOMEI product also supports many other useful features including MBR to GPT conversion,  removing drive from RAID-5, and free space allocation. If you want to use this software on Servers, you can try the Server edition.