adding a 1Tb dynamic disk to a basic disk XPMCE system

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stuck
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adding a 1Tb dynamic disk to a basic disk XPMCE system

Post by stuck »

I fitted a 1Tb drive to my fully patched XPMCE system last night. Apart from grazing my knuckle on a sharp edge of the PC's case and taking ages to retrieve a dropped fixing screw from the bottom of the casing that was easy enough.

When I booted the PC the drive didn't show up in Explorer but I wasn't expecting it to be formatted so that came as no surprise either. I right clicked on My Computer, selected Manage and then Local Disk Management (or something along those lines). A wizard popped up and merrily set up the disk and about 2-3 hours later it was all formatted and ready to go and I now have plenty of space for my growing digital photo collection.

Which brings me to to my question. The wizard has set up the 1Tb disk a Dynamic Disk (simple volume/one drive letter of about 930Gb), while the main system disk is configured as a Basic Disk. Does this mix of a basic disk and a dynamic disk matter?

Ken

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Bigaldoc
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Re: adding a 1Tb dynamic disk to a basic disk XPMCE system

Post by Bigaldoc »

Somewhere here in The Lounge is a thread that talked about something negative regarding dynamic disks, Ken. I can't answer your question for I know nothing about that technology. It seems (without searching) that some programs won't "work" with dynamic disks.

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stuck
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Re: adding a 1Tb dynamic disk to a basic disk XPMCE system

Post by stuck »

OK, I'll add that tip into my Google mix. Don't think it will be a limitation for me though as I'm only going to use the dynamic disk for data file storage, the OS and apps are on the basic disk.

I do know that OSes pre Win 2K can't access a dynamic disk but it's a XPMCE setup and I can already see it as an empty drive (>900Gb :eyeout: you can see for miles and miles... :grin: )

Ken

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StuartR
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Re: adding a 1Tb dynamic disk to a basic disk XPMCE system

Post by StuartR »

I avoid dynamic disks as many utilities don't understand them, and I don't see any benefits from using them
StuartR


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stuck
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Re: adding a 1Tb dynamic disk to a basic disk XPMCE system

Post by stuck »

So, since this disk in totally empty right now, I might be better off converting it to a basic disk holding a primary partition comprising a single (giant) drive before I copy gigabytes of data over to it and then discover the underlying dynamic nature causes problems.

This is why we have The Lounge.

Ken

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Bigaldoc
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Re: adding a 1Tb dynamic disk to a basic disk XPMCE system

Post by Bigaldoc »

If you convert it, you could always do what I did when I replaced my main drive about a year ago: replaced original 80 gig drive with a 500 gig.

I allocated and formatted only 150 gig, my "thinking" being that it would make things like chkdsk, disk imaging, etc. run a tad faster if they don't have to deal with the whole 500 gig. Later on, when I need more space, enlarging the partition doesn't take any time at all. Just a thought to consider.

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stuck
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Re: adding a 1Tb dynamic disk to a basic disk XPMCE system

Post by stuck »

I intend to leave the system disk alone, except to extend its partition into the space that will be released when the logical partition currently holding all my data becomes redundant, i.e. after the data is moved over to the new terabyte drive.

No, I'm not going to move the data all in one go. I'm going to copy it over slowly and only delete it when I'm happy I've not lost anything in the process. Speedy is not my middle name. :grin:

Ken