Should I Convert to Dynamic Disk in Windows 7/8/10/11?

Should I convert to dynamic disk?

Frankly speaking, converting basic to dynamic disk will improve the performance for your Windows operating system. But there are some situations you could not convert to dynamic disk:

♦When downgrading your Windows operating system;

♦Multi-boot environments (converting will cause problems If you have more than one operating system);

♦Unknown partitions like OEM partitions (it’ll be inaccessible after converting to dynamic disk).

♦Your Windows operating system not support dynamic disks.

Except for these situations, you could consider to convert basic to dynamic. But before converting, you must have enough understanding of the two disk storage types: Basic disk, Dynamic disk.

Basic VS Dynamic disk

The basic disk means a disk that contains partitions, like primary partitions, logical partitions. It supports both Master Boot Record (MBR) and GUID Partition Table (GPT) partition styles. Basic disk volumes consist of one set of contiguous extents on a single disk. Basic disk is the storage types most often used with Windows.

Dynamic disks has the ability which basic disks not supported to create volumes that span multiple disks like spanned and striped volumes, and is capable of creating fault-tolerant volumes like mirrored and RAID-5 volumes. It also supports both MBR and GPT partition styles.

The most important thing is Dynamic disks offer greater flexibility for volume management, because a database used to track the information about dynamic volumes and other dynamic disks in the computer. Besides, dynamic disk is compatible with all Windows OS from Windows 2000 to Windows 10. You could create volumes up to 2000 dynamic volumes on a system (recommended number is 32 or less).

How to convert to dynamic disk without losing data in Windows 7/8/10/11?

If you want to convert basic disk to dynamic disk in Windows 10/8/7, the Disk Management and AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional will help you out.

Disk Management

For majority of people, Disk Management would be your first choice to convert. The steps listed below:

Right click This PC, choose Manage to enterComputer Management.

Choose Disk Management under Storage.

Right click the basic disk and choose Convert to Dynamic Disk.

Then follow the prompted information to convert.

Some limitation of Disk Management that you should be aware of: If you want to convert dynamic disk to basic disk, the option Convert to Basic Disk is greyed out sometimes. In order to convert dynamic to basic disk , you have to delete all the partitions on dynamic disk. Thus, all the data will be wiped out or have to be backed up to other locations. It’s an annoying thing and time-consuming.

AOMEI Partitoin Assistant Professional

AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional is more reliable and flexible way to convert disk between basic and dynamic without losing data. It’s a comprehensive and powerful dynamic or basic disks and dynamic volumes management software for Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7/8/8.1/10.

It allows you to resize, extend, shrink, create, and delete dynamic volumes. You could move volume slice, and add drive to RAID, etc. Just a few clicks to convert to dynamic disk via its built-in tool, AOMEI Dynamic Disk Manager, refer to these text after downloading it:

Important: Please backup all the data on your basic disk in case your data lost because of some unexpected things.

1. Install and fire up AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional, click Dynamic Disk to access its Dynamic Disk Manager wizard. Click “Convert” in the top toolbar, and choose “Dynamic Disk Converter”.

2. Tick the Basic disk (Disk 2), and then hit OK.

3. View the change of Basic disk, press Commit to convert to Dynamic disk.

4. Press Proceed to commit the pending operation of converting Basic to Dynamic disk.

5. Then you will see the task progress is completed after few seconds.

Tip: The operation could not erase your data on basic disk.

After this, you could install Windows 7/8/8.1/10/11 on dynamic disk. Obviously, the problem “Should I convert to dynamic disk” should have an answer in your mind. You could also convert dynamic to basic disk with this software, first of all, you have to backup all the critical data on dynamic disk, and then delete all volumes on dynamic disk and choose Convert to Basic Disk to revert. After that you could create new logical partitions on it. The converting operation will reboot your Windows 7/8/10/11 PC to take effect.