How do I convert a basic disk to dynamic?

A. Windows 2000 introduces the idea of a dynamic disk needed forfault tolerant configurations. To convert perform the following:

Converting Basic disks to Dynamic disks don't require reboots - however anyvolumes contained on them after the conversion will generate a popup thatbasically says a re-boot is necessary before the volumes can be used. Igenerally say - NO, do not reboot - until all the volumes are identified andall the popups go away, then perform a single re-boot.

When you upgrade from basic to dynamic any existing partitions become simplevolumes. Any existing mirrored, striped or spanned volumes sets created with NT4.0 become dynamic mirrored, striped or spanned volumes respectively.

If you get a message that says you are out of space then you may not haveenough unallocated free space at the end of the disk for the private regiondatabase that Dynamic disks use to keep volume information. To be Dynamic itneeds about 1 MB of this space, sometime the space is not visible to the userin the GUI but it is still there.

You may not have the space if the partition(s) on the disk take up theentire disk and were created with Setup, an earlier version of NT or anotherOS. If partitions are created within Windows 2000 the space is reserved,partitions created with Setup will reserve the space in a later release.

To undo this conversion run Dmunroot.exe which will revert boot and systempartition back to basic but all other volumes will be destroyed. Alternatively you should backup any data on the disk you wish to preserve, then delete allpartitions - that should activate the menu choice "Revert to BasicDisk", the entire disk HAS to be unallocated or free space. Dmunroot is anunsupported utility available from Microsoft.