Upgrading the System or Boot Drive to Dynamic (Rooting)

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This article was previously published under Q222188

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SUMMARY

When you upgrade disks in Windows 2000 from basic to dynamic, all partition information is moved into a private database at the end of the disk. Only one partition table entry of type 0x42 is entered in the Master Boot Record (MBR) at sector 0.

The process is different for disks containing the system or boot partition. The process with these disks is called "rooting."

All entries in the partition table are kept intact, but the Filesystem ID fields are changed to 0x42 to verify that they are dynamic volumes. This is done so that the BIOS can load the kernel and other files necessary to start the Disk Management driver files to read the dynamic volumes. If there is any unallocated space on the volume, an entry is added similar to those of other dynamic volumes (not rooted) that encompasses the rest of the space.

MORE INFORMATION

To revert a disk back to basic, you must back up the data, reformat the volume, reinstall Windows, and then restore the data.

NOTE: Any disks added after rooting the system or boot drive are lost because they are only included in the private region (database) and not in the partition table. For additional information, please see the following articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

175761 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/175761/EN-US/ ) Dynamic vs. Basic Storage in Windows 2000

222470 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/222470/EN-US/ ) Dynamic Disk Numbering Is Different from the UI