Convert a Dynamic Disk to a Basic Disk Without Losing Data

When working with hard drives in Windows, you will most likely have your disks configured as basic rather than dynamic. Dynamic disks in Windows are used for advanced storage management, allowing for features that are not available on basic disks such as the following:

• Creating Volumes Across Multiple Disks – Supports spanned, striped (RAID 0), mirrored (RAID 1), and RAID 5 volumes.
• Resizing & Extending Volumes – Can be used to expand storage without losing data.
• Fault Tolerance Features – Configuring mirrored volumes (RAID 1) and RAID 5 for redundancy.
• Performance Enhancements – Striped volumes (RAID 0) improve read/write speeds.

In comparison, basic disks are typically used for the following purposes.

• Storing Operating Systems & Data – Used for system and data storage in personal and business computers.
• Creating Primary & Extended Partitions – Basic disks support up to 4 primary partitions or 3 primary and 1 extended partition.
• Simple Volume Management – Allows formatting, resizing, and assigning drive letters.
• Compatibility with More Operating System Versions – Works with all Windows versions and can be easily moved between systems.
• Using with Bootable Drives – Basic disks can hold boot partitions like the Windows system drive (C:).

If for some reason you have a dynamic disk and you want to convert it back to a basic disk, you will notice that the option is greyed out in the Windows Disk Management tool.

For our first example, we will be showing you how to convert a dynamic disk to a basic disk without losing data for our secondary E drive. As you can see in the image below, our E drive has 6GB of data stored on it.

To convert this dynamic disk to a basic disk without losing any data, we will be using a free tool called NIUBI Partition Editor. We have used NIUBI in the past to do things such as rearranging partitions on a drive to allow for tasks such as expanding volumes into unallocated space. NIBUI Partition Editor comes in a free edition as well as a professional edition. They also have an installable version and a portable\standalone version. You can download NIBUI Partition Editor here. You should also consider making a backup before performing any procedures like this on your hard drives.

Once we open NIBUI Partition Editor, we will see a similar interface to that of the Windows Disk Management tool. Now we will find our E drive, right click on it and choose Convert to basic disk. You should make sure that Disk Management, File Explorer and any files you have open on the drive are closed before starting this process.

You will then see a message asking if you are sure you want to convert the dynamic disk to a basic disk. You can then click on the OK button to continue.

The conversion process will not be complete until you click the Apply button at the upper left of the program.

You will then see another confirmation message asking if you want to execute the changes now. You can once again click the OK button to confirm.

Now that the process is complete, we can go back to Disk Management and see that the E drive is a now a basic disk.

When we check the properties of the disk again, we see the same size for the used space as we did before.

Now we will do the same process on our Windows C drive. As you can see in the image below, our C drive (Disk 0) has been converted to a dynamic disk.

We will once again use NIUBI to convert it back to a basic disk using the same procedure.

Since we are converting our Windows drive to a dynamic disk, the process will have to be done outside of Windows so you will need to reboot your computer to begin the conversion.

Your computer will then convert the dynamic disk to basic before starting Windows again.

Now when we go back to Disk Management, we can see that the Windows drive is now a basic disk.

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