Windows® Small Business Server 2008 Administrator’s Companion

Partitions and Volumes

In Windows Server 2008, the distinction between volumes and partitions is somewhat murky. When using Disk Management, a regular partition on a basic disk is called a simple volume, even though technically a simple volume requires that the disk be a dynamic disk.

As long as you use only simple volumes or partitions, you can easily convert between a basic disk (and partition) and a dynamic disk (and a volume). Once you use a feature that is only supported on dynamic disks, however, changing back to a basic disk will mean data loss.

Best Practices

Recovering or rebuilding a server that has a dynamic disk for the boot disk can be tricky. We suggest keeping your boot disk (C) a basic disk and use hardware mirroring (RAID 1) to safeguard ...