Dynamic disk management - Resize dynamic disk (Extend or shrink dynamic volume)

Why to resize dynamic disk?

Resizing dynamic disk will be helpful to make good use of disk space, especially maximize computer performance. For example, when the system volume is low disk space on dynamic disk, we want to add some free space for system volume to make our computer works well. So we need to resize the bigger dynamic volume to free up some unallocated space and extend system volume.

About dynamic disk

A dynamic disk is a physical disk that provides features that basic disks do not, such as support for volumes spanning multiple disks. Dynamic disks use a hidden database to track information about dynamic volumes on the disk and other dynamic disks in the computer. A disk managed by a software RAID provider with support for flexible volume reconfiguration. A dynamic disk uses a partition as a container for volumes; there is no guaranteed mapping.

Windows 2000 introduced the Logical Disk Manager and the diskpart command line tool for dynamic storage. All versions of Windows 2000 support three types of dynamic disk volumes: simple volumes, spanned volumes and striped volumes.

Dynamic disk applies to the following Operating Systems.The following table describes the support case for each Windows.

Operating System	Simple, Spanned and Striped Volume	Mirrored Volume	RAID-5 Volume
Windows 2000 Professional		-	-
Windows 2000 Server
Windows 2000 Advanced Server
Windows XP Home	-	-	-
Windows XP Professional		-	-
Windows Server 2003 Standard
Windows Server 2003 Enterprise
Windows Vista Home Basic	-	-	-
Windows Vista Home Premium	-	-	-
Windows Vista Business		-	-
Windows Vista Enterprise		-	-
Windows Vista Ultimate		-	-
Windows Server 2008
Windows 7 Starter	-	-	-
Windows 7 Home Basic	-	-	-
Windows 7 Home Premium	-	-	-
Windows 7 Professional			-
Windows 7 Enterprise			-
Windows 7 Ultimate			-

Dynamic disk is a good choice for the people who want to maximize the hard drive performance, especially for some small companies or that for particular use. Compared to basic disk, dynamic disk has many advantages. However, it has two huge disadvantages, too. One is that if you convert a basic disk to dynamic, you cannot convert it back to basic without data loss in Disk Management, as you need to delete all dynamic volumes firstly before converting.

The other is that in most conditions the dynamic volume still cannot be extended in disk management, especially for the system volume. Many people would encounter this problem if they need to increase dynamic disk. To offset the limitation of Disk Management and offer better solution for dynamic disk resizing, EaseUS Partition Master offers a powerful function to resize dynamic disk directly with all data protected.

Manage dynamic disk by Disk Management

Right click My Computer, select Manage -> Storage -> Disk Management, open Windows built-in Disk Management, you can do following operations on dynamic disk by Disk Management.

• Create, delete and format dynamic volume
• Add or change drive letter of the dynamic volume
• Extend and shrink simple volume or spanned volume
• Expand a simple volume to spanned volume
• Add mirror for the simple volume
• Break or remove mirror for mirrored volume and let it become simple volume
• Convert dynamic disk to basic disk, but you must delete all dynamic volumes before converting.

Before Windows Vista, Disk Management has the following limitations to resize dynamic volume.

Features	Windows 2000	Windows Server 2000	Windows XP	Windows Server 2003
Extend system volume/boot volume	-	-	-	-
Extend/shrink simple volume
Extend/shrink spanned volume
Extend/shrink mirrored volume	-	-	-	-
Extend/shrink striped volume	-	-	-	-
Extend/shrink RAID-5 volume	-	-	-	-

Tips: Extend the simple volume which was converted from the basic disk of Windows XP/2003 that was upgraded from Windows 2000.

In Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008, Disk Management has the following limitations to resize dynamic volume.

Features	Windows Vista	Windows 7	Windows Server 2008
Extend/shrink system volume/boot volume
Extend/shrink simple volume
Extend/shrink spanned volume
Extend/shrink mirrored volume	-	-	-
Extend/shrink striped volume	-	-	-
Extend/shrink RAID-5 volume	-	-	-

Operations above can not be achieved by Disk Management, but a third-party partition magic software can help you do them to resize dynamic disk.

Manage dynamic disk by EaseUS Partition Master

EaseUS Partition Master can do following dynamic disk management operations :

• Extend dynamic volume, including system/boot/simple/spanned/striped/mirrored/RAID-5 volume, to maximize computer performance as well as better dynamic disk volume management.
• Shrink dynamic volume, including system/boot/simple/spanned/striped/mirrored/RAID-5 volume to free up disk space.
• Convert dynamic disk to basic disk without losing data.
• Copy dynamic volume, including system/boot/simple/spanned/striped/mirrored/RAID-5 volume.
• Delete dynamic volume, explore dynamic volume, check file system on dynamic volume, defrag dynamic volume.
• Convert FAT dynamic volume to NTFS file system
• Repair RAID-5 volume when it failed.

Disk Management VS EaseUS Partition Master when resizing dynamic volume

The following is the comparison of Disk Management and EaseUS Partition Master when resizing dynamic disk.

Features	Windows 2000/XP/2003 Disk Management	Windows Vista/2008/7 Disk Management	EaseUS Partition Master
Extend system volume/boot volume	-
Extend simple volume
Extend spanned volume
Extend mirrored volume	-	-
Extend striped volume	-	-
Extend RAID-5 volume	-	-
Shrink system volume/boot volume	-
Shrink simple volume or spanned volume	-
Shrink mirrored volume, striped volume or RAID-5 volume	-	-

Comparing to Disk Management, EaseUS Partition Master provides more convenient and safer way to resize dynamic disk.

Resize dynamic disk (extend and shrink dynamic volume) with EaseUS Partition Master

Partition manager software - EaseUS Partition Master can help you resize 5 type dynamic volumes: simple volume, mirrored volume, striped volume, spanned volume and RAID-5 volume. Its "Resize dynamic volume" feature can help you:

• Extend dynamic volume, including system/boot/simple/spanned/striped/mirrored/RAID-5 volume, to maximize computer performance as well as better dynamic disk volume management.
• Shrink dynamic volume, including system/boot/simple/spanned/striped/mirrored/RAID-5 volume to free up disk space.

Resize dynamic volumes can be easily realized by following steps:

1. Download EaseUS Partition Master and install it on your computer.

2. Launch it and right click the volume that needs to be resized. Then select "Resize volume" to resize dynamic disk;

3. Position the mouse pointer on the right partition handle to extend or shrink the dynamic volume, or you can directly put in a size number.

4. Click OK, and you will see the changed volume in the disk layout. Click Apply to execute the operation.

Another safe way to resize dynamic disk

To resize dynamic disk partition by resizing dynamic volume which can also be realized by converting the dynamic disk directly to basic disk and then resizing the partition in a direct and safe way.

For different dynamic volume, the situations are different when converting basic disk back to dynamic:

Simple Volume: After the Simple Volume being converted and resized on a basic disk, you can convert the basic partition back to Simple Volume in Disk Management without difficulty.

Mirrored Volume: If you want to convert the Mirrored Volume back after being converted to basic disk and resized on basic disk, at first you need to convert it to Simple Volume in Disk Management, then adding mirror with another dynamic disk.

Striped/Spanned/RAID5 Volume: Convert to basic disk feature in EaseUS Partition Master doesn't support Striped Volume, Spanned Volume and RAID 5 Volume. However, if you want to resize them, you can copy striped/spanned/RAID5 volume to basic disk and then resize the basic disk. By the way, these volumes can be converted to Simple Volume or Mirrored Volume only, as these Striped/Spanned/RAID5 dynamic volumes should be re-built in Disk Management. The step by step instructions, please refer to Copy Dynamic Disk.

Conclusion

More advanced features are also provided to manage your hard disk by EaseUS Partition Master.

• Merge partitions
• Repair RAID-5 volume

Besides partition manager features, EaseUS partition manager software also provides some other features like Partition Recovery Wizard to recover deleted or lost partition, Disk & Partition Copy Wizard to upgrade or backup disk.

Dynamic volume basic knowledge:

Simple volume: A volume with disk space from one dynamic disk. The simple volume can be expanded to spanned volume.

Spanned volume: A spanned volume is created from free disk space that is linked together from multiple disks. You can extend a spanned volume onto a maximum of 32 disks. A spanned volume cannot be mirrored and is not fault-tolerant.

Striped volume: A striped volume is also known as RAID-0, store all their data across several disks in stripes. This allows better performance because disk reads and writes are balanced across multiple disks.

Mirrored volume: A mirrored volume is also known as RAID-1, it is the replication of logical disk volumes onto separate physical hard disks in real time to ensure continuous availability. A mirrored volume is a complete logical representation of separate volume copies. When creating a mirrored volume, you must need two dynamic disks at least. If one of the disks fails, the data can still be accessed from the remaining disk.

RAID-5 volume: A RAID-5 volume is a fault-tolerant volume whose data is striped across an array of three or more disks. Parity (a calculated value that can be used to reconstruct data after a failure) is also striped across the disk array. If a physical disk fails, the portion of the RAID-5 volume that was on that failed disk can be re-created from the remaining data and the parity by repairing RAID-5 volume.

 

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