Dynamic Disks in Windows slows performance?

[mat_20]

Recently came from Proliant training, and the trainer said we shouldn't utilize Windows' Dynamic Disk when using the Smart Array controller. doing so will degrade performance. I have not been able to find any other documentation to prove or disprove this.. is it true.

this would be for a standard smart array contoller, with a couple of arrays, standard SCSI drives...

[Terry Hutchings]

It shouldn't degrade performance from a hardware standpoint.

What do you need dynamic disks for? Obviously if you're going to use this for software raid or some kind of volume set, then it will place a higher load on the server since it will be more work for the server. This is true for any server, desktop, etc.

[ernst limbrunner]

hi

dynamic disk does not reduce the disk performance.
it just contains the volume/partition information -the rest is done by the file system (ntfs).

but when you use software raid you may suffer from extreme performance losses (especially sw raid 5)

i tell my students not to use dynamic disk for this reason:

- disk utilities based on dos will not work
(this includes the recovery utilities like ghost, drive image, almost all partitioning tools)

- even hp rapid deployment pack cannot do any imaging with dynamic disks

- and if you want to use dynamic disks to do online extention, just forget it and use diskpart instead (comes with ms 2003 server and is available also for 2000)

best regards
ernesto