How to Convert Dynamic Disk to Basic Disk without Data Loss?

I. What are basic disks and dynamic disks?

Basic disk is the most commonly used storage type in Windows system. You can create and delete primary partitions and extended partitions; create and delete logical drives in extended partitions; and format partitions and mark them as active. If the partition format of the basic disk is MBR, the disk can create up to four primary partitions, or three primary partitions plus one extended partition, and multiple logical partitions can be created in the extended partition. If the partition format of the basic disk is GPT, a maximum of 128 primary partitions can be created. Each partition in a basic disk is independent and cannot be partitioned across disks. It must be continuous space on the same disk before it can be divided into a partition. The maximum capacity of a partition is the total capacity of the disk.

Dynamic disks can provide features that basic disks cannot, such as the ability to create volumes that span multiple disks (spanned and striped volumes) and create fault-tolerant volumes (mirrored and RAID-5 volumes). All volumes on a dynamic disk are called dynamic volumes, and a dynamic volume can consist of a group of non-contiguous extents on one or more physical disks. Regardless of whether the dynamic disks on your system use the MBR or GPT partition style, you can create up to 2000 dynamic volumes, although the recommended number of dynamic volumes is 32 or fewer. The following operations can only be performed on dynamic disks:

● Create and delete simple volumes, spanned volumes, striped volumes, mirrored volumes and RAID-5 volumes;

●Extending simple volumes or spanned volumes;

●Delete a mirrored volume from a mirrored volume, or split a mirrored volume into two volumes;

● Repair mirrored volume or RAID-5 volume;

● Reactivate missing or offline disks.

Generally, a basic disk can contain a system startup disk, while a dynamic disk is more used for storing data, not as a system startup disk. If you need to convert a dynamic disk to a basic disk, it is recommended to back up important data in advance, because all dynamic volumes on the dynamic disk need to be deleted for conversion.

II. Before converting the disk type, please back up important data

Because converting a dynamic disk to a basic disk will cause data loss in the dynamic disk, it is recommended that you back up your computer data before converting the disk type. In addition to manually copying and pasting files to other disks for backup, you can also use professional backup software – Renee Becca for batch backup, which supports automatic and regular backup of data and backup of various objects (such as system, hard disk, partition, file wait). The following is the specific introduction of the software.

1. What is Renee Becca

Renee Becca is a tool specially used for system/hard disk data backup and restoration. This software adopts leading incremental/differential backup technology, which can save you more time and disk space. It can not only help you easily backup and restore important data in your computer, such as programs, system configurations, emails, photos, videos, documents, bookmarks, etc.; it also provides system backup, partition backup, hard disk backup and disk cloning. It has many functions including system migration, and the operation is also very simple.

2. How to use Renee Becca to backup dynamic disk data?

Step 1: Download, install and run Renee Becca on the computer, and select the File Backup option in the main interface Backup column.

Step 2: Next, select all the files that need to be backed up, and select the hard disk partition where the backup data will be stored in. If you want the data to be more secure, you can store the backup file in an external in the hard disk. If you need regular automatic backup, you can open the task plan and select the appropriate backup function, that is, make a daily/weekly/monthly automatic backup plan in Schedule and click OK to enable the automatic backup function, and then Select the appropriate backup mode in Backup Scheme.

Step 3: Finally, click the Backup button to start executing the backup file command according to your settings, and you can see the progress of all backup tasks on the taskbar. After the backup is complete, you can click the Recovery button to restore the file to the specified disk when you need to restore the file.

Step 4: After that, select the location where the files are to be restored, and click the Recovery button.

After backing up important files, we can safely convert dynamic disks to basic disks. Please continue reading below.

III. How to convert dynamic disk to basic disk?

1. Through disk management

Step 1: Right-click the Start menu and select Disk Management.

Step 2: In Disk Management, right-click each volume on the dynamic disk that you want to convert to a basic disk and click Delete Volume.

Step 3: After deleting all volumes on the dynamic disk, right-click on the disk and click (Convert to Basic Disk).

2. Through the Diskpart command

Step 1: Press (Windows key + R key) at the same time and enter (diskmgmt.msc) in the new dialog box, click (OK) to open Disk Management, and check the number of the disk you want to convert to basic disk.

Step 2: Search Diskpart in the search box in the lower left corner, right-click it, and select Run as administrator to open the Diskpart program.

Step 3: Then enter the following commands to delete all volumes on the dynamic disk and convert it to a basic disk, and press the key Enter after each command is entered.

(list disk) (disk information will be listed)

(select disk 1) (select disk 1, here disk 1 is a dynamic disk, you can change the disk number according to the actual situation)

(detail disk) (can view all volumes in the disk)

(select volume 0) (0 is the volume number, change according to the actual situation)

(delete volume 0) (delete volume 0)

(select volume 1) (1 is the volume number)

(delete volume 1) (delete volume number 1)

When all the volumes on the dynamic disk are deleted, continue to enter the following command:

(select disk 1) (select disk 1, where disk 1 is a dynamic disk)

(convert basic) (converts an empty dynamic disk to a basic disk)

(exit) (exit)