Need to Convert Dynamic Disk to Basic Without Formatting

Question

My hard drives got converted to Dynamic in order to increase the number of partitions. I tried Partition Wizard Server Version, but its not working. I need to convert the partitions to basic to install Kali-Linux in dual boot.

Answer 1

I've seen claims that at least two third-party tools can do this:

• EaseUS Partition Master
• MiniTool Partition Wizard

I've never tried either of them, though, except in brief tests that did not include such a conversion. Thus, I have to give you a heavy "use at your own risk" sort of disclaimer.

I've also seen suggestions to delete all the partitions and use a partition-recovery tool like TestDisk to do the job; however, this strikes me as extremely risky. Part of the point of a "dynamic disk" is that filesystems may not occupy entirely contiguous sections of the disk, like this:

+------------------------+
|    A   |   B   |   A   |
+------------------------+

Here, "A" and "B" are two filesystems. Note that "A" is fragmented, much like a file can be within a filesystem. To recover such a configuration using conventional partitions, your software would have to juggle disk sectors around. TestDisk and similar tools can't do this, and in fact they'll probably miss that the filesystems are fragmented, which could result in massive filesystem damage. OTOH, if a partitioning program supports filesystem resizing, it might be able to handle the job. I can't promise that either EaseUS Partition Master or MiniTool Partition Wizard can do this, but they'd be more likely to do it properly than TestDisk.