What are basic and dynamic disks?
Basic disks and dynamic disks are two types of hard disk configurations in Windows. Most personal computers are configured as basic disks, which are the simplest to manage. Advanced users and IT professionals can make use of dynamic disks, which use multiple hard disks within a computer to manage data, usually for increased performance or reliability.
A basic disk uses primary partitions, extended partitions, and logical drives to organize data. A formatted partition is also called a volume (the terms volume and partition are often used interchangeably). In this version of Windows, basic disks can have either four primary partitions or three primary and one extended partition. The extended partition can contain multiple logical drives (up to 128 logical drives are supported). The partitions on a basic disk cannot share or split data with other partitions. Each partition on a basic disk is a separate entity on the disk.
Dynamic disks can contain a large number of dynamic volumes (approximately 2000) that function like the primary partitions used on basic disks. In some versions of Windows, you can combine separate dynamic hard disks into a single dynamic volume (called spanning), split data among several hard disks (called striping) for increased performance, or duplicate data among several hard disks (called mirroring) for increased reliability.
Windows Vista Ultimate and Windows Vista Enterprise editions support spanning and striping dynamic disks, but not mirroring. (Windows Server 2008 supports mirroring.) For more information for advanced users, go to the Windows Vista Springboard Resource Guide website.
Dynamic disk
A physical hard disk formatted for dynamic storage, which includes support for volumes that can span multiple disks.
Basic disk
A physical disk that can be accessed by MS‑DOS and all Windows-based operating systems. Basic disks can contain up to four primary partitions, or three primary partitions and an extended partition with multiple logical drives.
Extended partition
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Extended partition
A type of partition on a basic disk that should be used if you want to create more than four volumes. Extended partitions can contain multiple logical drives that can be formatted and have drive letters assigned to them.
Primary partition
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Primary partition
A type of partition created on basic disks that can host an operating system and functions as though it were a physically separate disk. Also called a volume. Up to four primary partitions can be created on a basic disk.
Volume
A storage area on a hard disk that is formatted with a file system. Volumes have drive letters assigned to them. A single hard disk can have multiple volumes. Some volumes can span multiple hard disks.
Logical drive
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Logical drive
A volume created within an extended partition on a basic disk. A logical drive can be formatted and assigned a drive letter, but cannot host an operating system.
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