Basic disks contain primary partitions and extended partitions. Once a partition is created with a basic disk configuration, the partition cannot be changed or extended. When you first install an OS, the disk it’s installed on is a basic disk and any new disk is a basic disk by default. It uses normal partition tables or logical drives to manage all partitions and data on the hard disk. The following article explains how the two storage models differ and when to use each type.īasic disk is one of the ways to configure a hard drive which is the same as the configuration used with MS-DOS. Both the disk configurations support FAT, FAT32, and NTFS file systems, except you cannot create a FAT32 dynamic volume.
Both the disk configurations have different features and they have their own pros and cons, but they are related somehow. However, Windows started using the concept of dynamic disks since Windows 2000. Windows XP/2000 used basic disk configuration by default. A basic disk is same as the configuration used with MS-DOS and Windows NT, and it has existed ever since the days of DOS. When you add a new hard disk, your system also recognizes the hard disk as a basic disk. When you first install Windows on the hard disk, it is initially set up as a basic disk. Both are the two types of hard drive configurations most often used in Windows.
