Dynamic Disks

Does the Disk Director Suite 10 support dynamic disks? In what capacity will I be able to work with the program, i.e. will there be any limitations?

 

Hello stephbro,

Thank you for your interest in Acronis Disk Management Software.

We regret to inform you that current version of Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0 does not support Windows Dynamic Disks. Our Development Team is currently working on this feature. Please accept our apologies for the inconveniences.

Thank you.
--
Semyonov Vasily

 

No, Acronis Disk Director does not support dynamic disks. But you can look at Paragon Partition Manager 7, Server Edition. It looks like it does from their website.

 

This one from v-com also claims to support Dynamic Disks if you want to check it out as well...

http://www.v-com.com/product/Partition_Commander_Home.html

 

As annoying that it is that Acronis do not support dynamic disks there is an easy, workaround:

1.. Convert your disks back to dynamic without losing any data (see point 1... explanation below)

2.. Use Acronis Disk Directory to modify your partitions.

1.. Explanation
A really good article is at http://thelazyadmin.net/index.php?/archives/161-Converting-Dynamic-Disks-Back-to-Basic-Disks.html

You may find that you have an entry under 01D0 as well as 01C0. This will be another partition on the disk. This is fairly normal because when you install windows and select "whole disk" there is a small amount of disk space that is not allocated. (You may not even know about its existence)

If this happens to you you will need to change the 3rd byte to 07 on 01D0 as well, otherwise the disk will go offline.

I performed this with Windows Server 2003, and had no problems, but make sure that you have a reliable backup.

 

I don't understand why Version 10 won't support RAID when Version 9 does. Please advise if this is going to be implemented in an update.

 

That's because while most RAIDs are set using Dynamic Disks, they are two different things. V10 does support RAID arrays, it just doesn't support Dynamic Disks yet.

 

Hi

You can use the disk editor in DDS10 [or 9] orDiskProbe to change Dynamic to Basic. #6

Taake Care,
TheQuest

 

But to convert it back to a basic disk, you would have to break any mirror which exists, this is not extremely nice in some situations, nor preferable.

I was almost ready to place an online order for True Image and Disk Director Suite, but decided to browse the support & forum first. Glad I did, but disheartened to learn of the limitations...