New drives in laptop, should I make them basic or dynamic?

[Basil]

I have updated my Dell Inspiron 1720 laptop to use a 120GB SSD drive in bay one and a Toshiba 500 GB conventional drive in bay two. I will be running XP Pro on this machine. I tested my NLite custom install CD on this and it loaded XP fine, with all my desired settings. I then added the second drive. I find an option to make this second drive basic or dynamic, whilst the first drive with XP on it is shown as basic in disk manager. I am not familiar with this dynamic thing, and a search has left me little the wiser. It's no big deal to reinstall XP if required. How should I have these drives for best results please? I have somehow ended up with this new 500 GB drive formatted NTFS which is what I expected, but showing as dynamic, with the SSD showing as basic. Thanks for any help.

[jaclaz]

I have updated my Dell Inspiron 1720 laptop to use a 120GB SSD drive in bay one and a Toshiba 500 GB conventional drive in bay two. I will be running XP Pro on this machine. I tested my NLite custom install CD on this and it loaded XP fine, with all my desired settings. I then added the second drive. I find an option to make this second drive basic or dynamic, whilst the first drive with XP on it is shown as basic in disk manager. I am not familiar with this dynamic thing, and a search has left me little the wiser. It's no big deal to reinstall XP if required. How should I have these drives for best results please? I have somehow ended up with this new 500 GB drive formatted NTFS which is what I expected, but showing as dynamic, with the SSD showing as basic. Thanks for any help.

Leave it/them as "basic".

Dynamic disks features make sense (if any) in a Server environment.

http://www.petri.co.il/difference_between_basic_and_dynamic_disks_in_windows_xp_2000_2003.htm

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/understand-the-use-of-basic-and-dynamic-disks-in-windows/5034875

jaclaz

Edited December 21, 2011 by jaclaz

[allen2]

I would also let them as Basic and would avoid at all costs dynamic in server environment. That's the best way to loose data.

[Basil]

OK, thanks guys, have left them as basic. I believe it's trivial to change them from basic to dynamic afterwards, even with data on, but not vice versa? I was just wondering if dynamic added worthwhile speed or data stability, that's all. Cheers, great forum BTW. All the best fro Christmas.

[jaclaz]

That's the best way to loose data.

Maybe not the "best", but surely among the "eligible" ones, though of course in a Server environment you have regular and frequent backups, so, the data loss risk is not that much (and dynamic disks do offer some advantages/features that may be handy in such an Environment).

@Basil

I will make the previous advice a bit stronger :

DO NOT EVEN THINK of using dynamic disks, EVER!

jaclaz

[allen2]

I did some benchmarks and there are no performance difference between a dynamic volume and a basic volume as long as you don't use the dynamic features:

- a dynamic volume extended will be slower than the same basic volume extended => the extension feature of dynamic disk reduce performance and the main reason behind this fact is that when you extend a dynamic disk it create another partition even when it is not needed (i.e. when it is on the same disk).

- as for the aggregate feature, it indeed increase the performances (like any software raid) when using many disks but the risk of data loss is very high and even with daily backups, you don't want to restore your data just because you lost access to one of the drives for 1s or so.

Also by design, dynamic disks use something like driver filter which is behind the filesystem driver and the storage driver and only this fact should slow down (but sometime not enough to be identified) a little the hardware.