Will Dynamic Disks survive a Vista to Win 7 upgrade?

[Gilbo]

I want to upgrade my desktop to Windows 7. It has a set of 4 HDDs in a Dynamic Disk stripe for Photoshop files. Will this data survive the upgrade?

My OS disk is separate drive. The dynamic disks won't be touched, but I will format the OS disk.

 

[Stereodude]

It certainly should.

 

[LunarMist]

Oh man, I would back it up anyway.

 

[Stereodude]

I don't know that I'd put anything I wanted on Dynamic Disks. Can any OS other than newer versions of Windows read 'em?

 

[Mercutio]

Dynamic disks have been around since Windows 2000. They're a perfectly standard technology in the Windows world.

 

[LunarMist]

Back in the days of SR I tried the dynamics in W2K compared to the Promise RAID 0 and neither provided much benefit other than larger capacity.

 

[Mercutio]

They have more functionality on Windows Server.

 

[Chewy509]

I don't know that I'd put anything I wanted on Dynamic Disks. Can any OS other than newer versions of Windows read 'em?

IIRC Linux could read them back in 2002-2003 quite easily. BSD followed about a year later, and Solaris a year after that.

For Linux, all that is needed is the correct kernel module to be loaded. (It's called LDM).

See: http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0204.3/0878.html

 

[mubs]

I vaguely remember reading that if Win 7 sees more than one HDD during install, it will write some critical data to HDDs other than the boot drive, creating boot problems if those other drives are removed. Suggestion was to disconnect all other drives, install Win 7 and then reconnect the other drives. I don't know if this will play nice in your situation, though.

 

[Stereodude]

I vaguely remember reading that if Win 7 sees more than one HDD during install, it will write some critical data to HDDs other than the boot drive, creating boot problems if those other drives are removed. Suggestion was to disconnect all other drives, install Win 7 and then reconnect the other drives. I don't know if this will play nice in your situation, though.

Windows XP does that too. If you have other partitions on the HD it may (will?) put NTLDR, boot.ini, and Ntdetect.com on one of the existing partitions, and not the one you install Windows XP to. This happened on my server. I had some existing partitions on the drive and erased my XP x86 install / partition to install XP x64. It placed NTLDR, boot.ini, and Ntdetect.com on the first existing partition in the first OS partition the installer made.

 

[MaxBurn]

I think the only real trick is getting your drives in order so that the boot drive/partition are really the first one according to the motherboard. Things like putting the intended boot drive on SATA-0 with only one boot partition on it helps that, then it doesn't really matter what other drives are in the computer, I never had problem one with ntldr/boot.ini after I learned to keep track of what goes where.

I think the seven/vista upgrade process puts a text file at the root of every other drive containing the intended drive letter and that's it.

 

[Gilbo]

I think I'll setup the new system completely, and then add the disks in afterwards.


As for why Dynamic Disks are useful, for me, they provide an easy way to add space to a logical volume. I like to be able to keep my data on a single logical volume, so I use JBOD in Dynamic Disks so I can add space when I run low.

 

[BingBangBop]

You don't need dynamic disks for that! The ability to assign a new disk to a folder (rather than a drive letter) exists in basic disks too. I also believe that you don't need a dynamic disk to extend a drive either, if that is your method of choice. All you need is NTFS beyond the original NT OS.

 

[LOST6200]

Dinyamic Dicks can survive almost anythign that wuld not kill the host.

 

[ddrueding]

Assigning disks to folders gets really complicated really quickly. It leads to things like a volume having free space but a folder being full. Not good for organization, IMHO.

Dynamic Disks will survive most anything, including system upgrades and swaps.

 

[Stereodude]

Dinyamic Dicks can survive almost anythign that wuld not kill the host.

Is Dinyamism some sort of parasitic condition? Is it contagious? How is it spread?

 

[LunarMist]

Wasn't that DD in reference to the "other place?"

 

[Gilbo]

Assigning disks to folders gets really complicated really quickly. It leads to things like a volume having free space but a folder being full. Not good for organization, IMHO.

Exactly, I just want a pool I can continuously add to as I need space - no mucking about with which file is where.

 

[Stereodude]

Assigning disks to folders gets really complicated really quickly. It leads to things like a volume having free space but a folder being full. Not good for organization, IMHO.

I've assigned disks to folders for years and haven't found it problematic. Typically I have a small partition / drive (~100MB) that is empty with the exception of some folders that have drives mounted to them. This single drive is then shared over the network, so other computers can map one drive called drives$ and get access to the other computer's C, D, E, etc via the mounted drives to folders on it. The only issue is that some programs will complain that it doesn't have enough space when you want to copy something to it (because it's only 100MB). A few programs will continue after you tell them to copy anyway and complete successfully, but ultimately, the use of drives to folders hasn't been a problem.