How to Convert a Dynamic Disk to a Basic Disk?

Question

Hello,

I'm using Genuine Windows 7 HP SP1 x64 OEM version in my Acer Notebook.

Nowadays I have a trouble with my primary disk drive.

I Used 3rd party partition management software to shrink my "C" drive. The operation outside the windows wasn't successful and I faced a disk check after that. BTW It goes fine and my whole HDD becomes a dynamic disk. I want to convert it back to basic. But the convert option is inactivated in third party partition management softwares and even disk management utility. So how do I convert it back to basic?

I tried a clean custom windows installation, but I have following errors.

I'm unable to create, delete, extend any volumes here. All options are inactivated (gray) The only option available is "format"

And I was unable to continue Installing windows in the different drive. Then it gives me the bellow error;

Now what can I do to get my HDD back to the previous state?

Please help me.

Thanks in advance before.

Answer 1

Hi Osanda,

Basic storage uses normal partition tables supported by all Windows versions right from MS-Dos, while a Dynamic disk storage has the feature that basic disks do not have, such as support for volumes spanning multiple disks, RAID 1 or RAID 5 disk arrays.

The downside of use Dynamic storage is that once the disk converted to Dynamic and being partitioned and used it cannot be converted back to Basic without losing data, as the Convert to Basic Disk option will be greyed out once it’s been used.

Follow these steps and check if this helps.

1.      Open the computer management console. To open this console, click the "Start" button, then "Control Panel," then double-click the "Administrative Tools" icon, and then double-click "Computer Management."

2.      Click the "Disk Management" heading in the leftmost pane of the Computer Management window.

3.      Right click all volumes contained in the dynamic disk you wish to convert.

4.      Select "Delete" from the context menu that appears.

5.      Right click the disk after all volumes are deleted and select "Convert to basic disk." This will convert the disk and set it up for normal usage.

Note: Back up all data before you perform this task.

Reply with the status of the issue and we will be glad to offer our assistance.

Answer 2

Win7 supports 5 basic partitions, when you created a new partition there would have been a warning that all partitions would be converted to Dynamic, which you apparently ignored.

I hope you have your recovery disks as the recovery partition will no longer function

Answer 3

this is the condition of my disk. C the OS at extreme corner and dynamic. i want to dual boot windows with opensuse. right click on the Disk 0 gives option to "convert to basic disk" but it is disabled.

please help me to convert the entire 500GB of memory to basic type.

waiting for your reply.

thank you in advance.

Answer 4

hey hi. was your problem solved? how did you do it?

Answer 5

Of course it was not solved.  He had to pay money for 3rd party software to convert the disk back to basic because Microsoft refuses to allow you to do it via command line on your own.  It's like they have implanted hijack software into the OS so that if you click the wrong thing, you have to then jump through $hoops$ to recover your data.  It's almost criminal how Microsoft ignores this post and refuses to even respond to it.

Pathetic.