Making Volumes or Disks Logical
Created a Simple/Spanned volume on 2 disks, labeled Music (D:). One disk is all Music (D:), and the 2nd disk has the remainder of Music (D:) and 2 other volumes, Pictures (E:) and Documents (F:). In a previous configuration, the labels on these disks, far left, said they were Basic MBR and the volumes all said Logical. Now, afer re configuring them, they say they are Dynamic MBR and the word Logical has disappeared from all volumes. Did I miss checking something when I reconfigured? Unable to find how to change them from Dynamic MBR to Basic MBR, or how to make them Logical again. Sorry to be so ignorant, but I've tried. Thanks for any help!
Neil:
The right-click context menus allow you to select between different conversions. When you right-click on the icon of a disk you bring up a context menu that allows operations that affect disks. When you right-click on the graphic picture of a partition you bring up a context menu that allows operations that affect partitions. See the attached four figures showing the steps to convert a disk from Dynamic MBR to Basic MBR (first figure), convert a disk from Basic MBR to Dynamic MBR (second figure), convert a partition from logical to primary (third figure), and the final result (fourth figure).
Also, a list of Actions and Tools will appear on the left side of the DD 12 window that lists all of the possible operations for your selection (disk or partition).
Hope this helps...
Very much appreciate your help! Following your instructions carefully, I find that
right clicking on the icons of the discs produces the menu as you said, but the option to
"Convert to Basic" as shown in figure 1 does NOT appear, only 'Change Status to Offline,'
'Clean Up Disk,' and 'Edit Disk.' And right clicking on the graphic picture of partitions produces the menu as you said, but, again, it's missing the option to 'Convert To Primary.' In addition to those menu choices not appearing, I suppose that, though I've tried, I'm failing to grasp some terminology or concept. Thanks so much for your help, but I'm no closer now to figuring this out than before. I'm thinking now of deleting all partitions and starting from scratch, or maybe trying to redo all of it with Windows Diskpart or with the Windows install disk. These disks were used in a previous configuration. Before repartioning them for a new configuration, I deleted their contents, but did not format or wipe them. Might that make a difference? Again, thanks a million!
Neil:
On your system you have a "Music" partition that spans two disks. You cannot convert a disk that contains a spanned partition to "Basic MBR" until after you have deleted the spanned partition. If I am reading your last reply correctly, you don't have any data on your disks yet, so these steps are easy.
Right-click on either one of the "Music" partitions and choose "Delete Volume". This will delete the entire spanned partition on both disks. Then right-click on each disk and choose "Convert to Basic". Now you should have two independent disks with some unallocated space on each where the "Music" partition used to reside.
Right-click on each of the unallocated spaces and choose "Create Volume" to format the new partitions. At this point you can also resize partitions to get the layout that you want. Without data on the partitions (volumes in Microsoft terminology) these operations will complete quickly. When you modify the layout of a disk that contains data, sometimes a lot of data has to be moved around, so that's what would take time to complete. But in your case this should be quick and easy.
Thank you so much, again, for your help, Mark! OK, I've Deleted the spanned volume that was Music and converted both of those disks to Basic MBR. And the other 2 volumes that were on the one disk (Pictures E: and Documents F:) now say they're Logical and Healthy, great so far.
I do not, however, wish to resize any of these partitions, I want to retain the spanned volume for Music just as you see in the enclosed picture. Can I now somehow redo the spanned Music volume and keep the volumes and disks as Basic MBR and Logical? Can I simply create separate volumes where MUSIC used to be and give them both the same drive letter?Or maybe I should label the partitions I want to span as Music and Music 2? Thanks again, you're my hero!
Neil:
You can redo the spanned "Music" volume but to create a spanned volume then the disk must be converted to a Dynamic Disk. A dynamic disk is no longer a Basic MBR disk and won't be identified as such. The "Music" volume will have the identifier "Simple/Spanned" volume instead of "Primary" or "Logical". You can only have Primary or Logical partitions on Basic MBR disks. You cannot give the two parts of the spanned Music volume different labels; they will have the same drive letter and label and the spanned volume will appear in Windows Explorer like one big disk with one drive letter and one label ("Music").
If you really want to keep your disks as Basic MBR with logical partitions, you can always create a Music partition on one disk and a Music2 partition on the other disk. This will appear in Windows Explorer as two volumes with different labels.