Some volumes will be lost after converting dynamic disk to basic

Solutions for how to avoid volumes lost after converting dynamic disk to basic.

AOMEI
April 7, 2021

This article applies to: Dynamic Disk Converter

Introduction:

When you are converting a dynamic disk to basic, it may prompt that some volumes will be lost after converting. And you are not able to proceed to convert the disk. In this case, you need to convert it in a roundabout way.

Before reading following content, please note that the software doesn’t support to convert a dynamic disk which is larger than 2TB to basic. And Dynamic Disk Converter doesn’t support to convert spanned/stripped/Raid5 volumes to basic partitions directly.

Situation 1:

Converting a dynamic disk with spanned/stripped/Raid5 volumes created on, you will get the information like in the screenshot below:

Solution:

  1. Run Dynamic Disk Converter.

  2. Select Method 2. Click Next.

  3. Select the volume which is indicated will be lost. Click Next.

  4. Select an unallocated space on a basic disk which is large enough to accept the source volume. Click Next.

  5. Confirm the operation. Click Proceed to perform the operation.

  6. After cloning the source volume to other location successfully, please delete that volume on the dynamic disk.

  7. You can go back to Method 1 to convert the dynamic disk to basic smoothly.

In addition, you can also copy or back up the files in that volume to other location directly, then delete that volume. To back up the files, you can use AOMEI Backupper.

Situation 2:

There are only volumes which are marked as simple volumes on the source dynamic disk, but you still have the problem.

This will only occur when the simple volume occupies 2 or more slices like in the screenshot (there are two E on the dynamic disk):

Solution:

  1. Run Dynamic Disk Manager.

  2. Right click the target volume and select Shrink Volume.

  3. Drag the bar to shrink the target volume until it only occupies one slice. Click OK.

    Before shrinking

    After shrinking

  4. Run Dynamic Disk Converter to convert the dynamic disk back to basic.

Note: If there are data saved on 2 or more slices of the volume, this method is impracticable.