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So basically i was trying to add a 5th partition and in that process I've converted my whole disk to a dynamic drive, which contains both NTFS and EXT4 with Linux on dual boot. Now the problem is it seems like i can't convert EXT4 volume back to basic, but i'am able to convert NTFS volumes, which will result in Unallocating the EXT4 volume.

  1. So is there any software or a way to convert the dynamic disk back to basic disk including the EXT4 partitions?

Extra Information:

  1. Windows Diskpart shows the EXT4 drive as RAW, Other disk management software's like AOMEI Partition Assistant show it as UNKNOWN, whereas the disk properties from my computer show it as EXT4

Attempt-1

Following the link provided by @harrymc.

These are the partition on disk: enter image description here executing the sfdisk --change-id /dev/sda 4 7 i converted the 4th partition to NTFS. enter image description here As you can see that my Drive D and Drive F, NTFS & EXT4 are shown in a single partition /dev/sda3 which is not true. Also my other partition /dev/sda1 is nearly 1MB.

So following the rest of the guide i converted them to ext4 & ntfs but when i started my windows os it showed the devices like this: enter image description here It converted the devices but the problem here is sfdisk cant differ b/w partition 1 & partition 2 and now it allocated both of them in a single drive.Where my EXT4 drive is of 100GB and NTFS partition is of 99.5GB.

So the method failed and I've went back to revert changes and covert it back to dynamic disk and now i am back in the same place.

Adnan karim
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  • Try the article [Dynamic to Basic](https://abhishek27.wordpress.com/dynamic-to-basic/) for a method using the Linux utility of `sfdisk`. This might not work if any partition had extensions (most likely not by your description). Always take full backups before modifying partitions. – harrymc May 21 '20 at 09:30
  • @harrymc check, I've updated the post. – Adnan karim May 23 '20 at 16:55
  • Could you also add a screenshot of `sfdisk -l` before the change? – harrymc May 23 '20 at 18:36
  • I may have an answer for you. – harrymc May 23 '20 at 20:24

1 Answers1

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I Have found an article for Windows 7: Convert a Dynamic Disk to a Basic Disk. This article describes doing the conversion without data loss, using an old and free version of Partition Wizard 4.2 Free (Partition Wizard is currently version 12, but only the paid version can do this conversion).

I went as far as running the program and verifying that it starts up correctly in Windows 10. I have (for obvious reasons) not dared to try actually converting my disk between Basic and Dynamic.

The article lists this procedure:

  • Download Partition_Wizard_4.2_free.zip (also available boot ISO)
  • Unzip and run PWIZ.exe
  • Right-click on the dynamic disk and select "Convert Dynamic Disk to Basic Disk"
  • Click OK
  • Click the Apply icon and then Yes
  • Reboot.

enter image description here

Always take a full backup before any disk or partition work.

User experience as reported by the poster:

In spite of Partition Wizard 4.2 not analyzing correctly the Linux partition, the conversion to Basic was successful as regarding the disk, with no data loss.

The Linux partition was preserved in content, but was marked as unallocated in the partition table. To mark it again as ext2/3/4 needed changing its id from 0 to 83 using a command such as:

 sfdisk --change-id /dev/sda 3 83

Finally easybcd was used to add the Linux partition to the bootloader and it booted successfully.

harrymc
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  • i've tried that before.. i says you ext4 drive will be unallocated. that's the main issue here. – Adnan karim May 24 '20 at 03:12
  • even though it says it will be unallocated. https://prnt.sc/smo91k. so i converted the drive to basic and it created 2 `unallocated` partitions.https://prnt.sc/smo9h6 One of which was my ext4 partition. So i though i should go back to `sfdisk` and change the `FileSystem` Type and i saw that id for unallocated filesys was `0`. https://prnt.sc/smoacs. Then i changed the id from `0` to `83` which is for `ext2/3/4`. https://prnt.sc/smoas4.Now windows disk manager showed this: https://prnt.sc/smob3o.Then i used `easybcd` to add my linux drive to bootloader and voila it booted successfully – Adnan karim May 24 '20 at 04:43
  • please add the above information so that i can accept your answer. thanks – Adnan karim May 24 '20 at 04:44
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    Glad the problem is now fixed. This post might be very useful to others. I did as you requested, but feel free to [edit](https://superuser.com/posts/1554502/edit) my answer and I'll ensure that it is done. – harrymc May 24 '20 at 06:30
  • Thanks, you've been a great help. – Adnan karim May 24 '20 at 06:33
  • You have also helped a lot in making this work out correctly. – harrymc May 24 '20 at 06:35