AlexM

Hi,

As title, other than by deleting / repartitioning and reinstalling the os?

A dynamic disk allows you to use striped and mirrored volumes in addition to the standard partitiop types, and I converted both of my 'basic' disks to dynamic disks.

I now want to install Redhat Linux as dual-boot, but it doesn't understand the dynamic disk partition table. I want to revert to 'traditional' partitioning, but this is a one way conversion unless you delete all of the partitions and change the partition type to simple.

At worst I can reinstall XP, but I'd rather not. ASR backups recreate any partitions that existed when the backup was taken, i.e. recreates my dynamic disks and volumes after deleting the 16Gb partition I created it in.

Any suggestions? I thought of doing a minimum installation and restoring the ASR backup and system state over the top, which should work - I'm trying to save having to reinstall XP first if possible.

Thanks,

Alex

messiah

Do you mean NTFS to Fat32?

You'll need something like Partition Magic - otherwise it's time for FDISK!!!

Jye

This happened to me when I installed a new HD, not sure why it made the HD dynamic over basic. I left it alone as I dont need to install any other OS. I'm sure It was because I used XP's disk management to format the new HD rather than fdisk but why I wasnt give the basic/dynamic choice before XP had its way I still dont know.

AlexM

The outcome...

You can't convert a dynamic disk to basic if it contains your boot partition, therefore reinstallation of XP required. Unfortunately Patitionmagic doesn't work with Dynamic disks.

I did try an ASR backup / restore, but that deletes any partitions and recreates the partition layout you had at the time of the reinstallation.

I then tried doing a new XP base installation in a 16Gb primary partition and overlaying the ASR backup and system state - result was a blue screen / reboot during boot. I eventually managed to repair my mangled installation by booting from the XP cd and choosing the repair an existing installation option. After re-applying SP1 and about a million WU hot-fixes everything is working again (phew!).

Have now installed Rehat Linux 9 on a primary partition on the 2nd hard drive and am using grub as a boot loader for XP / Linux.

The moral of the story is to stay well away from dynamic disks if you ever want more than one OS on the box at a time!. Stick to hardware raid controllers if you need RAID0 or 1!.

Cheers,

Alex