What happens to a Windows Dynamic Drive

In my windows (Windows 7) I have two primary logical volumns, One is on a SSD harddrive for my operating system and installed software, and my other is a Dynamic volume for my stored media. (I do alot of work with HD footage) I have all my media on the original DV tapes for backup purposes, just having them all available on my harddrive at all times is a major convience for me, well worth the few hundred dollar investment those 2TB drives were.

Anyway, Long story short is my windows install has become problematic and I want to reformat windows. Does this, or will this effect my dynamic drive in any way? I've got almost 3 TB of video on there and i really dont want to re-import all my DV tapes.

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grufftech

Posted 2011-01-30T20:40:59.813

Reputation: 339

I believe the dynamic volume may not be recognised on a new install of Windows, but I am not sure of this, so I'm not going to commit to a real answer. – None – 2011-01-30T20:43:12.007

Answers

From the looks of things, you've extended Drive E so that it's about 4 TB in size. The ONLY way you can do this without a RAID controller is to use the technologies Windows makes available to extend the data across multiple drives. (I get concerned about disk failure which would call ALL data on the E: drive to be inaccessible and may involve costly data recovery so I don't do this - I'd rather have 3 separate drives OR mount them under one folder). But I digress.

If you reinstall Windows, the disk should appear as foreign and all that should be necessary is to right click on it and select "Import..." (or some VERY similar wording).

Multiverse IT

Posted 2011-01-30T20:40:59.813

Reputation: 4 228

yea, i'm considering dropping in a 3rd 2TD drive and Raid5'ing the entire thing, Was really more of specific answer as to how the windows install process treats those drives. – grufftech – 2011-02-01T02:11:46.550

Disconnect the storage drives when you reinstall the OS. When the reinstall is done and all updated, shut down and connect the drives back

Moab

Posted 2011-01-30T20:40:59.813

Reputation: 54 203