How to convert a Basic Disk into a Dynamic Disk on Windows 11

Depending upon your need to use your Windows Computer, thinking of converting your basic disk to a dynamic disk is a good idea, as you can come up with a lot of functions that are not available when using a basic disk. This article takes you through a general idea of what basic and dynamic disks are, along with the different methods that are used to convert a basic disk to a dynamic disk.

What are Basic and Dynamic Disks?

Generally, there are two kinds of hard disks (Basic Disk and Dynamic Disk) in a computer. Basic Disk uses partitions like primary partitions and logical drivers that can be formatted with a file system. These are more suited for home users who perform the basic ordinary things on the computer. On the other hand, Dynamic Disks uses a Logical Disk Manager (LDM) or Virtual Disk Service (VDS) in tracking the dynamic partitions of the disk. These are generally used by IT Professionals / Administrators as they offer more functionality and helps in increasing reliability and performance.

The main advantages of using a Dynamic Disk over a Basic Disk are:

1. Dynamic Disks help in creating volumes that span multiple disks. With this, you’ll be able to make better use of your available disk space by combining areas of unallocated space that are shared across many disks.
2. Using dynamic disks, you can only create fault-tolerant volumes (RAID-5 or mirrored).
3. You can also save data to different hard disks and create stiped volumes. These volumes improve the disk performance by allowing more than one disk to read and write data.

How to Convert Basic Disk to Dynamic Disk?

In this section let’s see the different methods that will allow you to convert a basic disk into a dynamic disk. But before going through the steps involved in different methods, make sure that you take a backup of your data to an external disk. This is done because there could be a loss of data as a result of this operation.

1. Use Disk Management

Step 1: Open the Run window by pressing Win+R, type diskmgmt.msc, and hit Enter.

 

 

NOTE: Sometimes, you will be prompted by User Account Control (UAC) prompt, click on Yes to grant the admin access.

Step 2: Once the Disk Management window opens, right-click on the basic disk you wish to change and click on “Convert to Dynamic Disk”.

 

 

 

Step 3: A pop-up window opens, tick the box against the basic disk and click on OK.

 

 

NOTE: Make sure you double-check the basic disk you wish to convert into a dynamic disk. Here, I have only one disk so it is selected by default.

Once, all the steps are done your basic disk is converted into a dynamic disk. This is a simple technique used for conversion. If you wish to use another way get down to the method below.

2. Use Command Window

Step 1: Open the Run window by pressing Win+R, type cmd, and Press Cltr+Shift+Enter to open an elevated command prompt window.

 

 

Step 2: Once you are inside the command prompt, type and run the given commands in the same order as below and press Enter after each command.

diskpart

list disk

select disk X

convert dynamic

Let us see the steps one by one below.

Type diskpart in command prompt and hit Enter.

 

 

Now type list disk in command prompt and hit Enter.

 

 

Now, type Select disk X ( Here, it is disk 0) and hit Enter.

 

 

Finally, type convert dynamic in the command prompt and hit Enter.

 

 

Step 3: Finally, type exit and hit Enter to end the disk conversion process.

Step 4: Close the Elevated Command Prompt Window.

This is also an easy process and does the conversion without any data loss. If you wish to convert the disk using a third-party software tool then move down to the next method below.

That’s all.

Hope this article is informative.

Thanks for Reading.