About Dynamic Volume
The volumes which stored on dynamic disk are called dynamic volume. There are five different types of dynamic volumes: Simple volume, Spanned Volume, Striped volume (RAID 0), Mirrored volume (RAID 1) and RAID 5. As same as partition on basic disk, the file system of dynamic volume is also formatted as NTFS or FAT and the NTFS is set as the default. Each volume can be assigned a drive letter.

Dynamic Volume Types and Features

Simple volume

Spanned volume

Striped volume (RAID0)

Mirrored volume (RAID1)

Raid-5 Volume

Compare with Three Different Software Raid Array

Volume Name Striped Volume Mirrored Volume RAID-5 Volume
Tech Name RAID0 RAID1 RAID5
Fault Tolerance Not support Support Support
Improving I/O Performance Not support Not support Support
Disk Requirement At least two disks Only two disks At least three disks
Active Volume The whole disk volume 50% of whole disk volume (disk number-1) * a single disk volume
Volume Name Striped Volume Mirrored Volume RAID-5 Volume

Dynamic Volume Types Support

Note: The table below lists the operating systems that support certain dynamic volume types.

  Simple Volume Spanned Volume Striped Volume Mirrored Volume RAID5 Volume
Dos and Windows 9X
Windows 2000 Professional
Windows 2000 Server/Advanced Server/Datacenter Server
Windows XP Home
Windows XP Professional
Windows 2003 Small Business Server/Web/Standard/Enterprise/Datacenter Edition
Windows Vista Home Basic/Home Premium
Windows Vista Business/Ultimate/Enterprise
Windows Server 2008 R2/Datacenter/Enterprise/Standard
Windows 7
Home Premium/Home Basic/Starter
Windows 7 Professional/Unlimited/ Enterprise