Basic or Dynamic Disks?

[sao123]

So I want to know what are the advantaged and disadvantages of
Dynamic Disks vs Regular Disks.

 

[mayest]

Basic Storage Versus Dynamic Storage in Windows XP

 

[Nothinman]

Good luck getting another OS to read your disk if you use a Dynamic Disk, PQMagic and friends aren't 100% reliable but at least with them you have a chance.

 

[postmortemIA]

this thread has PEBKAC written all over it.

 

[RebateMonger]

Advantages of Dynamic Disks:
Extreme flexibility with partitions
Ability to create partitions larger than 2 TeraBytes
Ability to use Windows Software RAID. Unfortunately, in my experience, Windows Software RAID isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Disadvantages of Dynamic Disks:
Many 3rd-party disk tools (including data recovery tools) apparently won't work on Dynamic Disks
Requires a full understanding of how Dynamic Disks work. These Forums have frequent postings by people who've "lost" their Dynamic Disk when moving the drive to a different PC.

 

[sao123]

Originally posted by: postmortemIA
this thread has PEBKAC written all over it.

I've been a IT professional for just over 5 years.
Inexperience in a particular technology does not mean PEBKAC... only being a moron does.


I read all the microsoft pages, several descriptions from winxpnews.com & the eldergeek... and i couldnt find much outlining the benefits vs the risks....


so im hoping someone with some experience might weigh in, unfortunately the search function is broken...

 

[sao123]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
Advantages of Dynamic Disks:
Extreme flexibility with partitions
Ability to create partitions larger than 2 TeraBytes
Ability to use Windows Software RAID. Unfortunately, in my experience, Windows Software RAID isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Disadvantages of Dynamic Disks:
Many 3rd-party disk tools (including data recovery tools) apparently won't work on Dynamic Disks
Requires a full understanding of how Dynamic Disks work. These Forums have frequent postings by people who've "lost" their Dynamic Disk when moving the drive to a different PC.

thanks...

I have 4 drive currently.

2 drives in a hardware raid 0 for a boot partition...
2 drives in a hardware raid 1 for data drives & partitions. Its partitioned into 4 areas.

i find myself at different times having to adjust the size of the partitions on my Raid 1... depending on the amount and type of files I am saving at a particular time.
[Which with partition magic is a long process (and sometimes scary of losing data)...]

Im hoping that dynamic disks would benefit me, but yes i would be concerned about losing my data...

 

[esit]

If you intend to upgrade to Vista Home Premium, do not use dynamic disks! MS dropped dyanmic disk support in Vista Home Premium (while windows MCE XP still has it).

 

[sao123]

Originally posted by: esit
If you intend to upgrade to Vista Home Premium, do not use dynamic disks! MS dropped dyanmic disk support in Vista Home Premium (while windows MCE XP still has it).

ouch... good to know.
though ill probably go for the vista ultimate.

 

[xtknight]

Dynamic is a really bad idea for compatibility. I would just stick with basic and become a masochist. Or, use gparted, which in my experience is more reliable than PartitionMagic.

 

[postmortemIA]

gparted is indeed good, but problem is that he's got RAID, and gparted might see two drives instead of array.

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: postmortemIA
gparted is indeed good, but problem is that he's got RAID, and gparted might see two drives instead of array.

It's a hardware Raid. That is only an issue with software Raid. Unless of course he is talking about the software assisted wannabe hardware Raid cards, then I think only the nVidia (nvraid) raid has that problem.

 

[Nothinman]

Unless of course he is talking about the software assisted wannabe hardware Raid cards, then I think only the nVidia (nvraid) raid has that problem.

No, pretty much all of them do, nVidia's just the most common AFAIK.

It's possible to work around it with dmraid and still work on the array, but that probably requires more Linux knowledge than the OP has.

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Unless of course he is talking about the software assisted wannabe hardware Raid cards, then I think only the nVidia (nvraid) raid has that problem.

No, pretty much all of them do, nVidia's just the most common AFAIK.

It's possible to work around it with dmraid and still work on the array, but that probably requires more Linux knowledge than the OP has.

Sometimes, linux is just too smart for it's own good...

 

[sao123]

Originally posted by: Brazen

Originally posted by: postmortemIA
gparted is indeed good, but problem is that he's got RAID, and gparted might see two drives instead of array.

It's a hardware Raid. That is only an issue with software Raid. Unless of course he is talking about the software assisted wannabe hardware Raid cards, then I think only the nVidia (nvraid) raid has that problem.

Promise Fasttrak 378 & Via VT8237 onboard raid controllers (Asus a8v motherboard)

 

[postmortemIA]

then only Linux distros with dmraid installer support can edit your partitions on-fly: FC5, FC6, SuSE 10.2 and RHEL 5.

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: sao123

Originally posted by: Brazen

Originally posted by: postmortemIA
gparted is indeed good, but problem is that he's got RAID, and gparted might see two drives instead of array.

It's a hardware Raid. That is only an issue with software Raid. Unless of course he is talking about the software assisted wannabe hardware Raid cards, then I think only the nVidia (nvraid) raid has that problem.

Promise Fasttrak 378 & Via VT8237 onboard raid controllers (Asus a8v motherboard)

those aren't true hardware raid, but yeah most people just call them that. You may be screwed with GParted, although you could try out the latest liveCD and see what happens.

 

[Nothinman]

Sometimes, linux is just too smart for it's own good...

Actually it's the vendors that are too dumb, Linux talks to the ATA controller like it's an ATA controller because that's what it is, the vendors tout them as RAID controllers and then do all of the RAID in the driver to trick their users into think that they're getting more than they are. And some people fall for it really hard, just look at: http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=34&threadid=1972014&enterthread=y

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Sometimes, linux is just too smart for it's own good...

Actually it's the vendors that are too dumb, Linux talks to the ATA controller like it's an ATA controller because that's what it is, the vendors tout them as RAID controllers and then do all of the RAID in the driver to trick their users into think that they're getting more than they are. And some people fall for it really hard, just look at: http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=34&threadid=1972014&enterthread=y

Ha, yeah, I just read the first post. So much misinformation...

 

[Nothinman]

Ha, yeah, I just read the first post. So much misinformation...

And what's worse is that he's convinced that the RAID in their drivers is faster than Linux software RAID but he won't do any tests to prove it. I'd be happy to do it as I happen to have one of those SiliconImage controllers on this motherboard but I don't have any spare SATA disks to do the benchmarks with.

 

[postmortemIA]

Once again, whole world is happy with some solution (onboard RAID), except Linux hard-core users, who find it convenient to blame it on somebody else.

Now they'll convince OP that his RAID (and Windows) sucks, so he shall move to mighty linux and its soft RAID.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: postmortemIA
Once again, whole world is happy with some solution (onboard RAID), except Linux hard-core users, who find it convenient to blame it on somebody else.

Now they'll convince OP that his RAID (and Windows) sucks, so he shall move to mighty linux and its soft RAID.

Your a nutter.

Excuse us for not falling for a cute motherboard marketting scam and actually telling people to use something that is better.

If you need compatability with Windows and you want mirrored raid then dmraid is what you want to use, you don't have a choice. If you want mirrored raid in Linux, and windows isn't a issue, then you want to use 'md'. I tried to outline to you previously the massive superiority of using Linux software raid rather then propriatory motherboard-specific software raid, but you do what you want.

 

[postmortemIA]

I like Windows, and 96% of people with computers like it too. Nobody really cares for your linux software RAID.

 

[Nothinman]

Once again, whole world is happy with some solution (onboard RAID), except Linux hard-core users, who find it convenient to blame it on somebody else.

And most of the world is also happy with McDonald's food but that doesn't mean it's not disgusting. People love placebos and cheapo RAID, RAM drives, defrag tools, registry cleaners, memory defraggers, etc all provide these and flourish because people don't take the time to learn how the computer works and so don't realize that they're not actually doing anything useful.

Now they'll convince OP that his RAID (and Windows) sucks, so he shall move to mighty linux and its soft RAID.

Windows software RAID sucks because MS made it suck. You only get to create linear and RAID0 volumes with Win2K and XP Pro, if you want redundancy you have to pay for Server. But from the aspect of 3rd party software support they're about even, PQMagic and the like won't work with either, but Linux does have an advantage in that it actually comes with all of the tools to manage the software RAID so 3rd party software isn't necessary.

 

[postmortemIA]

The Promise and VIA RAID that OP uses have more features than RAID 0.

Partition magic works with it, even in DOS mode.