(WINDOWSNETWORKING.COM) One of the Windows Server 2003 features that I've always found most useful is the ability to convert basic disks to dynamic disks. The advantage of doing this is that the Windows operating system allows you to span a single volume across multiple dynamic disks. By spanning a volume across multiple disks, you can create a larger volume than what a single disk can hold, you can achieve better performance than what a single disk would provide you with, and you can even achieve a degree of fault tolerance against hard disk failure. Even with all of these benefits, there are some serious issues that you need to be aware of before you even think about converting a basic disk into a dynamic disk. In this article, I will discuss these issues.

Before I Begin

Before I get started, there is one thing that I want to get out of the way up front. I know that some of the people who are reading this got here because they did an Internet search on how to convert a basic disk into a dynamic disk. If you are one of those people, then I'm assuming that you will probably skip to the instructions at the end of the article. Before you do though, there is one extremely important thing that you need to know about the conversion process. Converting a basic disk into a dynamic disk is a semi-permanent operation.

Once you convert a basic disk into a dynamic disk, you can not convert it back into a basic disk unless you delete every volume on the entire disk. There is no way to convert a dynamic disk into a basic disk and preserve the drive's contents. You will have to make a backup of the data prior to the conversion, delete the volume, convert the disk to basic, create a partition, assign the partition a drive letter, and restore your backup.

Not Every Hard Disk Can Be Converted

Now that I've explained the most important detail about the conversion process, let's move on to rule number two. This rule is that not every basic hard disk can be converted to a dynamic disk. Most of the rules regarding which disks can and can't be converted are common sense.

For example, removable media, such as ZIP disks and Jaz disks, can't be converted into dynamic disks. The reason for this is simple. A dynamic disk can span multiple drives. If a volume spanned a removable disk and the disk was removed from the system, then the volume would be broken.

Another situation in which a basic disk can't be converted into a dynamic disk is if the basic disk exists on a laptop computer. There are a few different reasons for this. First, you really shouldn't be running Windows Server 2003 on a laptop anyway. Second, most laptops only have one hard drive. A system with a single hard disk would not gain any benefit from using dynamic disks. Third, usually when

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