Windows 10: Can't format dynamic drive

Trying to add a second HDD to my friend's PC to give more storage.

The HDD in question was previously the OS drive in an old PC and still has some windows and program files on it.,

Want to format but I can't format or delete the volume. And because it's a dynamic drive, most 3rd party software I found won't touch it.

Disk management screenie below. Disk0 is the problem. Disk1 is the current OS

(Install language is German. Hopefully not a problem in finding a solution )





:)

 

Need to upgrade HD to SSD with Win 10 installed

Thanks Zig,

This is probably tied together but I get a "E000101F4: Acronis Migrate Easy has detected unsupported hard disk drives. Acronis Migrate Easy does not support Windows Dynamic Disks, EZ-Drives, etc."

I have the new hard drive formatted as a NTFS and the computer sees it as drive D:

 

Disk Partition

Hi Mazeed,

Thank you posting your query in Microsoft Community. I understand your concern and I am glad to assist you.

It says that because maximum partitions that can be done on a hard drive is 4. if you exceed 4, the drive need to change to dynamic from basic. If you are in dynamic mode and you want to go basic, you'll have to format everything on hdd. Windows does not
install on dynamic partition. The lesser the partition the better.

Consider making an Image Backup of your hard drive as a means of recovering everthing should something go wrong when creating and resizing that new partition. Just type Back up in the search bar and follow through.

Hope this post helps. Get back to us for further queries. We are happy to help.

 

Hello Bob, *Smile

You might see if you may be able to use the "Clean" command on the disk to wipe it and make it unallocated. Afterwards, you could create a new simple volume on it.

Disk - Clean and Clean All with Diskpart Command - Windows 7 Help Forums

 

Hi there,

I tried clean in diskpart but it wouldn't work

 

Does it give you any error messages?

As a test, you might see if connecting the disk to a different SATA port so it's no longer "Disk 0" may help. Usually it's best to keep the OS drive as "Disk 0" instead.

If you haven't already, you might also see if using the "clean" command in a command prompt at boot may work better.

 

Hi,

You have to convert the disk back to a basic disk first using disk management.

Convert a Dynamic Disk to a Basic Disk - Windows 7 Help Forums

• Back up all volumes on the disk you want to convert from dynamic to basic.
• In Disk Management, right-click each volume on the dynamic disk you want to convert to a basic disk, and then click Delete Volume for each volume on the disk.
• When all volumes on the disk have been deleted, right-click the disk, and then click Convert to Basic Disk.

The same can be achieved using Diskpart but this should do it too.

Cheers, *Wink

 

Thanks for the replies. Have solved via an alternate route.

2nd upgrade job was to replace a faulty dvd drive. Once that was fine I was able to use a bootable Mint dvd and user gparted to remove that partition.

 

Hi,

OK. Well done.

Cheers, *Wink