Resize Dynamic Disk to Extend or Shrink Dynamic Disk

PAGE CONTENT:

Why Need to Resize Dynamic Disk?
Resize Dynamic Disk by Disk Management
Resize Dynamic Disk by Qiling Partition Master
Another safe way to resize dynamic disk
Everything You Want to Know About Dynamic Disk

Why Need to Resize Dynamic Disk?

Resizing dynamic disk is helpful for users to make good use of disk space, especially maximize computer performance. For example, when the system volume has insufficient disk space, we want to add some free space for system volume to make the computer works well. So we need to resize the bigger dynamic volume to free up unallocated space and extend system volume.

2 Ways to Resize (Extend/Shrink) Dynamic Disk

Dynamic disk is a good choice for people who want to maximize hard drive performance. However, it has two huge disadvantages. One is if you convert a basic disk to dynamic, you cannot turn it back without data loss, as you need to delete all dynamic volumes first before converting. The other is in most conditions the dynamic volume still cannot be extended in disk management, especially for the system volume. Many people will encounter this problem if they need to increase the dynamic disk.

Here we will introduce two ways for you to resize the dynamic disk. One is the traditional Disk Management method, and the other is to apply a third-party tool - Qiling Partition Master which will offset the limitation and support to resize dynamic disk directly with all data protected.

Method 1. Manage and resize dynamic disk by Disk Management

Step 1. Right-click My Computer, select Manage -> Storage -> Disk Management, open Windows built-in Disk Management.

Step 2. Select the volume you want to resize and right-click, choose "Extend Volume" or "Shrink Volume" to resize the dynamic disk.

Step 3. Type the volume size that you want to resize in MB. Then click Next.

Step 4. Click Finish and you will find the dynamic volume has been resized.

Before Windows Vista, Disk Management has the following limitations to resize dynamic volume.

Features	Windows 2000	Windows Server 2000	Windows XP	Windows Server 2003
Extend system volume/boot volume	-	-	-	-
Extend/shrink simple volume	Y	Y	Y	Y
Extend/shrink spanned volume	Y	Y	Y	Y
Extend/shrink mirrored volume	-	-	-	-
Extend/shrink striped volume	-	-	-	-
Extend/shrink RAID-5 volume	-	-	-	-

Tips: Extend the simple volume which was converted from the basic disk of Windows XP/2003 that was upgraded from Windows 2000.

In Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows Server 2008, Disk Management has the following limitations to resize dynamic volume.

Features	Windows Vista	Windows 7	Windows Server 2008
Extend/shrink system volume/boot volume	Y	Y	Y
Extend/shrink simple volume	Y	Y	Y
Extend/shrink spanned volume	Y	Y	Y
Extend/shrink mirrored volume	-	-	-
Extend/shrink striped volume	-	-	-
Extend/shrink RAID-5 volume	-	-	-

Method 2. Manage and resize dynamic disk by Qiling Partition Master

As mentioned before, Disk Management has many limitations in resizing the dynamic disk. As a better replacement, Qiling Partition Master can do the following dynamic disk management operations. Check and download Qiling Partition Master on your computer.

Free Download

Extend dynamic volume, including system/boot/simple/spanned/striped/mirrored/RAID-5 volume, to maximize computer performance.
Shrink dynamic volume, including system/boot/simple/spanned/striped/mirrored/RAID-5 volume to free up disk space.
Convert dynamic disk to basic disk without losing data.
Copy dynamic volume, including system/boot/simple/spanned/striped/mirrored/RAID-5 volume.
Delete dynamic volume, explore dynamic volume, check file system on dynamic volume, defrag dynamic volume.
Convert FAT dynamic volume to NTFS file system
Repair RAID-5 volume when it failed.

Repair RAID-5 volume when it failed.

Step 1. Locate the Target Partition

To start extending partition, you should first select the drive/partition that want to adjust its size and select "Resize/Move" in the "Disk management" page.

Step 2. Extend the Target Partition

To shrink the partition, simply drag one of its ends to free up unallocated space and click "Proceed" to start resize the partition.

To extend the partition, make sure that there is unallocated space aside (if there isn't, follow the above steps to create some). In the same way, drag your mouse into the unallocated space and click "Proceed" to start resize the partition.

To move a partition position, you need to leave unallocated space next to the target partition. If no, free up some unallocated space first. Then drag the whole partition left or right to adjust its position and click "Proceed" to start move the partition.

Another safe way to resize dynamic disk

To resize dynamic disk partition by resizing dynamic volume which can also be realized by converting the dynamic disk directly to basic disk and then resizing the partition directly and safely.

For different dynamic volume, the situations are different when converting basic disk back to dynamic:

Simple Volume: After converting and resizing the Simple Volume on a basic disk, you can convert the basic partition back to a Simple Volume in Disk Management without difficulty.

Mirrored Volume: If you want to convert the Mirrored Volume back after being converted to basic disk and resized on a basic disk, at first you need to convert it to Simple Volume in Disk Management, then adding mirror with another dynamic disk.

Striped/Spanned/RAID5 Volume: Convert to basic disk feature in Qiling Partition Master doesn't support Striped Volume, Spanned Volume, and RAID 5 Volume. However, if you want to resize them, you can copy these volumes to the basic disk and then resize the basic disk. By the way, these volumes can be converted to Simple Volume or Mirrored Volume only, as these Striped/Spanned/RAID5 dynamic volumes should be re-built in Disk Management. For the step by step instructions, please refer to Copy Dynamic Disk.

Everything You Want to Know About Dynamic Disk

A dynamic disk is a physical disk that provides features that basic disks do not, such as support for volumes spanning multiple disks. Dynamic disks use a hidden database to track information about dynamic volumes on the disk and other dynamic disks on the computer. A disk managed by a software RAID provider with support for flexible volume reconfiguration. A dynamic disk uses a partition as a container for volumes; there is no guaranteed mapping.

Windows 2000 introduced the Logical Disk Manager and the diskpart command-line tool for dynamic storage. All versions of Windows 2000 support three types of dynamic disk volumes: simple volumes, spanned volumes, and striped volumes.

Dynamic disk applies to the following Operating Systems. The following table describes the support case for each Windows.

Operating System	Simple, Spanned, and Striped Volume	Mirrored Volume	RAID-5 Volume
Windows 2000 Professional		-	-
Windows 2000 Server	Y	Y	Y
Windows 2000 Advanced Server	Y	Y	Y
Windows XP Home	-	-	-
Windows XP Professional	Y	-	-
Windows Server 2003 Standard	Y	Y	Y
Windows Server 2003 Enterprise	Y	Y	Y
Windows Vista Home Basic	-	-	-
Windows Vista Home Premium	-	-	-
Windows Vista Business	Y	-	-
Windows Vista Enterprise	Y	-	-
Windows Vista Ultimate	Y	-	-
Windows Server 2008	Y	Y	Y
Windows 7 Starter	-	-	-
Windows 7 Home Basic	-	-	-
Windows 7 Home Premium	-	-	-
Windows 7 Professional	Y	Y	-
Windows 7 Enterprise	Y	Y	-
Windows 7 Ultimate	Y	Y	-

Conclusion

More advanced features are also provided to manage your hard disk by Qiling Partition Master. Besides partition manager features, Qiling partition manager software also provides some other features like Partition Recovery Wizard to recover deleted or lost partition, Disk & Partition Copy Wizard to upgrade or backup disk.

Basic knowledge of Dynamic Volume:

Simple volume: A volume with disk space from one dynamic disk. The simple volume can be expanded to a spanned volume.

Spanned volume: A spanned volume is created from free disk space that is linked together from multiple disks. You can extend a spanned volume onto a maximum of 32 disks. A spanned volume cannot be mirrored and is not fault-tolerant.

Striped volume: A striped volume is also known as RAID-0, store all their data across several disks in stripes. This allows better performance because disk reads and writes are balanced across multiple disks.

Mirrored volume: A mirrored volume is also known as RAID-1, it is the replication of logical disk volumes onto separate physical hard disks in real-time to ensure continuous availability. A mirrored volume is a complete logical representation of separate volume copies. When creating a mirrored volume, you must need two dynamic disks at least. If one of the disks fails, the data can still be accessed from the remaining disk.

RAID-5 volume: A RAID-5 volume is a fault-tolerant volume whose data is striped across an array of three or more disks. Parity (a calculated value that can be used to reconstruct data after a failure) is also striped across the disk array. If a physical disk fails, the portion of the RAID-5 volume that was on that failed disk can be re-created from the remaining data and the parity by repairing the RAID-5 volume.