What is the difference between a Basic Disk and a Dynamic Disk?
There are two different types of disk storage available to the Windows 2000/XP Environment: Basic Disk Storage Dynamic Disk Storage Basic Disk Storage Basic storage uses partition tables that are supported by MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows 95, Microsoft Windows 98, Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Me), Microsoft Windows NT, Microsoft Windows 2000, and Windows XP. A disk initialized for basic storage is called a basic disk. A basic disk contains basic volumes, such as primary partitions, extended partitions, and logical drives. Dynamic Disk Storage Dynamic storage is supported by both Windows 2000 and Windows XP Professional. A disk that is initialized for dynamic storage is called a dynamic disk. A dynamic disk contains dynamic volumes, such as simple volumes, spanned volumes, striped volumes, mirrored volumes, and RAID-5 volumes. Reference Microsoft KB Articles 175761 and 314343 for more detailed information on this topic.
