Is there an advantage to Dynamic disks (within a pool)?

[thepregnantgod]

I have 30 disks - approx 100TB.  

 

I'm slowly converting each of them to 64K formatted disks (most of the files are very large 40gb media files).  

 

But is there an advantage of dynamic vs basic?  If so, what?  And what are the disadvantages?

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Ugh.  .... just ... ugh. I've been there, I've done that. 

 

That said, ReFS uses 64kb allocation unit size (cluster size). If that matters. 

 

 

 

But is there an advantage of dynamic vs basic?  If so, what?  And what are the disadvantages?

 

As for dynamic disks:

Advantages: 

• software RAID (striped, spanned, mirrored, parity?)
• It doesn't show up in StableBit DrivePool. 
• It doesn't show as a cache drive in StableBit CloudDrive.

Disadvantages:

• Software RAID
• It doesn't show up in StableBit DrivePool (for a reason)
• Issues with importing disks into new systems (it doesn't always work, and then you lose the disk or have to run data recovery, and HOPE the software support Dynamic Disks (most do)).
• Flaky disks will cause performance issues and cause disk drop outs, and can cause "bad resyncs".
• Even more issues, that I may not be familiar with. 

Needless to say, there is a very distinct reason we don't support Dynamic Disks. They cause too many issues, and you shouldn't use them.  Storage spaces is a better option here. 

 

But basically DON'T. Don't use Dynamic Disks unless you have absolutely no other choice. 

 

 

If anything, you *should* initialize the disks as GPT though.  For non-UEFI systems, you can ONLY do this for the non-boot disks. But that shouldn't be an issue here. 

The main reason is that GPT stores the partitioning information twice. Once at the beginning of the disk (as does MBR), but again at the end of the disk.  

The reason this is important is .... you've had a disk turn up RAW before, right? This backup partition table should help that from happening. 

[thepregnantgod]

Drashna, I remember reading good things about ReFS - but I don't think Windows 10x64 supports it yet.

 

I'll avoid Dynamic disks.  Thanks for the advice.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

I'll avoid Dynamic disks.  Thanks for the advice.

 

Good idea.

 

I've used them in the past, and yea, they're a nightmare when things go wrong.

 

Drashna, I remember reading good things about ReFS - but I don't think Windows 10x64 supports it yet.

 

Windows 8 and up support ReFS (that includes WIndows 10).

 

If the drive is already formatted, then you can use it without any issues.  However, you CANNOT format as ReFS on Windows 8-10.  Unless it's a mirrored Storage Spaces array (or on drives from the newer StableBit CloudDrive betas). This is because there is a flag on the drive that allows ReFS formatting. 

 

Otherwise, there is a registry hack to allow it.  Which I recommend against (the registry hack creates a tree that is ONLY used by Windows Setup, and may cause issues if left long term).