What is a dynamic disk?

Discussion in 'Acronis True Image Product Line' started by mareke, Dec 6, 2004.

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  1. mareke

    mareke Registered Member

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    This is not so much a problem as something I am curious about. I just bought and installed a 160 GB Seagate Sata drive for backups etc and Acronis informed me it was a dynamic disk and unsupported. I'm wandering what a dynamic disk is and how it differs from my other disks which are not dynamic and wether what makes it dynamic is the physical way it is built and operates or simply the way I've installed the disk. To install it I put it in an external hard drive case and connected it to the computer through a bracket that came with my Asus P4C800 motherboard. Since it connects to the motherboard using a Sata data cable and molex power cable the external drive is super fast running at the same speed as the internal drives for data transfers etc but is portable and can be turned off when I don’t need it (I just wish they made longer Molex connectors for this as hooking up a series of Molex connectors to connect the external drive case to the bracket at the back of the computer isn't very pretty). Lastly I know Acronis will not restore an image to a dynamic disk but will it restore an image from a dynamic disk to a disk that is not dynamic?
     
  2. John Farrar

    John Farrar Registered Member

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    Mareke
    I have the same motherboard as you and have a Maxtor 160GB SATA drive fitted, along with my 2 other ATA HDs. TI8 sees this SATA drive as a SCSI drive o_O but has never reported it as being a dynamic drive. Therefore TI8 does Restore to it OK as my other thread testifies. I don't have a Raid configured.
    HTH
    John
     
  3. mareke

    mareke Registered Member

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    It makes me curious as to how your disk is different from mine as I picked mine from a number of drives on display and apart from differing capacities and manufacturers I thought they were all pretty much the same. I'm wandering if it's the way it's connected and formatted etc that makes it dynamic or the way it's made.
     
  4. John Farrar

    John Farrar Registered Member

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    Mareke
    FWIW My SATA is formatted as NTFS, as all my drives are, so I don't know if that makes any difference. I would not think so.
    John
     
  5. puff-m-d

    puff-m-d Registered Member

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  6. mareke

    mareke Registered Member

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    Puff-m-d thank you for the articles. It looks to me that I can convert the dynamic disk back to a basic disk if I delete the partions and format it so dynamic disks are not physically different to basic disks but rather it's the way they are set up. I used Windows XP Disk Management to format it but I certainly don't remember seeing a choice between dynamic and basic so Windows XP chose for me.

    I don't see a great advantage in having it dynamic but neither is there much advantage in changing it back to basic unless I want to install a different operating system on it to dual boot. I remember a recent post with someone complaining that Acronis would not work on their computer because they had a dynamic disk and now I see that the person could have fixed this problem rather than thinking they had bought the wrong type of disk for Acronis. Thanks again for the articles.
     
  7. Stephane

    Stephane Guest

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