Curt Simmons Windows 2000 has introduced several new features for disk management. This tip, by Curt Simmons, the author of Configuring Windows 2000 Server , discusses some differences between the new dynamic disks and the old basic disks. This tip is excerpted from InformIT .
Server now provides support for dynamic disks as well as basic disks.
A dynamic disk is not restricted to four partitions per disk, and several disk-management tasks discussed later in this article can be performed only on dynamic disks. In Windows 2000, these volumes are now called spanned volumes, striped volumes, mirrored volumes, and RAID-5 volumes. Dynamic disks in Windows 2000 Server offer you more management flexibility without the partition limitation of basic disks. Dynamic disks can contain an unlimited number of volumes, but they cannot contain partitions or logical drives. Also, once you upgrade to Windows 2000 Server from Windows NT Server, Windows 2000 Server further limits what you can do with a basic disk.