Learn Windows XP Professional: Using the Disk Management Tool (Page 4) Page 4

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Dynamic Disk Limitations

Just like anything else, with certain advances there are certain limitations and drawbacks.

• Laptop Limitation. Dynamic disks are not supported on laptops, removable disks (such as Jaz or ORB drives), detachable disks that use Universal Serial Bus (USB) or IEEE 1394 (FireWire) interfaces, or on drives connected to a shared SCSI bus. On laptops you do not even see the option to convert basic disks to dynamic within the Disk Management tool.
  


• Multi-boot considerations. Dynamic volumes cannot be accessed by  MS-DOS, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Millennium Edition, Windows NT 4.0, or Windows XP Home Edition operating systems that are dual-booted with Windows XP Professional. If you want computers running these operating systems to be able to access the data, you need to store the data on basic volumes.
  


• Extending Volumes. When basic volumes are converted to dynamic they may or may not have an entry in the partition table depending on whether that volume was a system or boot partition. If the volume that was converted was originally a system or boot partition it retains its old entry in the partition table. You can install Windows XP Professional on that volume; however, you will be unable to extend it. If the converted volume was not originally a system or boot volume, it will not have the old partition table entry. You won't be able to install Windows XP Professional on the volume, but it will be possible to extend it.

  Volumes converted from partitions on Windows 2000 systems have an entry in the partition table. On Windows XP Professional systems, volumes converted from partitions do not have an entry in the partition table unless the partitions were originally system or boot partitions. You can see if a volume has an entry in the partition table by right-clicking the volume within the Disk Management tool. If the Extend Volume option is disabled, the volume has an old entry in the partition table.

That's a wrap for this week. Be sure to check back in next week for the next article in this series.

In the meantime, best of luck in your studies and please feel free to contact me with any questions on my column and remember,

"Absolute anonymity isn't practical, or possible, in real life or on the internet."

Jason Zandri
Jason@Zandri.net
www.2000trainers.com