If Dynamic Disk Invalid Issue Occurs, How to Repair It with Ease?

Dynamic Disk Is Invalid in Disk Management

In most cases, you may access Disk Management to check related disk information when encountering any disk error in Windows. Invalid dynamic disk issue is one of the most common issues that you can find in Disk Management, as shown below:

From this picture, you know your disk 1 is a dynamic disk but it is in “invalid” status, at this time, it is not allowed to access the data on this hard drive. Besides, you can also find diskpart disk 0 status invalid issue if you open diskpart.

Why dynamic disk shows invalid in Disk Management? Generally speaking, there are two main factors.

OS Doesn’t Support Dynamic Disk

All Microsoft Home Editions of operating systems don’t support dynamic disks, including Windows Vista Home Basic Edition, Vista Home Premium Edition, Windows 7 Home Basic Edition, Windows 7 Home Premium Edition and the systems before Windows 2000, such as Windows 98, NT and MS-DOS.

For example, you have converted your hard drive to a dynamic disk with Windows 7 Professional Version. Recently you buy a new computer with Windows 8 Home Version, and you want to continue using the dynamic disk on the new computer, however, you find this disk is in an invalid state when entering into Windows 8 Disk Management.

Dynamic Disk Information Isn’t Recorded

It is possible that a part of dynamic disk information is stored in the registry. When adding a dynamic disk to another computer, the system registry doesn’t make a record for dynamic disk information. So it is necessary to import dynamic disk information to the system registry first of all to another computer. 

In addition, corrupted partition table, bad sector, etc. can cause the dynamic disk to be invalid. Well then, what should you do if the dynamic disk shows invalid in Disk Management? Get the answers from the following paragraphs.

Recover Data from Your Invalid Dynamic Disk

When the dynamic disk invalid problem happens on Windows 10/8/7, it is most likely that you are worried about the disk data. You may ask: are my files lost and cannot be got back? Actually, they are still on the dynamic disk and can be recovered by using a piece of third-party software.

How to recover data if there are some important files on this dynamic disk? MiniTool Partition Wizard is worth recommending. It has a powerful feature called Data Recovery, enabling you to recover data from invalid disk easily.

This partition magic is designed to own six editions, including Free, Professional, Pro Ultimate, Server, Enterprise, and Technician. And each edition is different from others. Click to know the comparison. 

To recover files from the hard drive that has dynamic disk invalid problem, you need to get MiniTool Partition Wizard Pro Ultimate Edition or an advanced edition. And then, start the data recovery.

Step 1: Launch MiniTool Partition Wizard Pro Ultimate to its main interface. Then, click the invalid dynamic disk and select Data Recovery feature in the toolbar.

Step 2: After the feature is enabled, you need to choose the target disk to scan.

Step 3: Then, MiniTool Partition Wizard will start to scan the invalid dynamic disk. To get the best recovery result, you had better wait patiently until the full scan finishes.

Step 4: After a few minutes, the scan completes. Just go to find the files that you need, check these items, and then click the Save button to save them to another hard drive.

After completing the data recovery, you can take measures to fix the disk invalid problem. How to repair invalid dynamic disk without data loss? Try the following solutions.

Disk 1 Dynamic Invalid Fix

Solution 1: Dynamic Disk Invalid Reactivate CMD

Firstly, you may choose to reactivate dynamic disk via command prompt. Just type cmd in the search box, right-click on the tool to run it as administrators. Then, type the following command lines.

• diskpart
• list disk
• select disk n: n means the disk number of invalid dynamic disk.
• online disk

Sometimes, you can easily reactivate dynamic disk via command prompt. However, in most cases, dynamic disk invalid reactivate way is not useful. Or, you may consider doing that via Disk Management. Whereas when you right-click Reactivate Disk feature, you will receive such an error “This operation is not allowed on the invalid disk pack“.

If you fail to repair invalid dynamic disk without data loss free by this way, try the next solution – to convert to basic disk from dynamic disk. 

Solution 2: Convert Invalid Dynamic Disk to Basic

Use MiniTool Partition Wizard

In order to make sure that data on the target dynamic disk is safe, the method of converting to basic disk is very important. Is there any simple way? Of course, you can try a professional partition and disk management software to do this work without data loss.

Here, MiniTool Partition Wizard is also a good recommendation to manage your partition and disk well, including basic disk and dynamic disk. For converting to basic disk without losing data from dynamic disk, this dynamic disk partition manager is quite useful.

How to repair invalid dynamic disk without data loss using this dynamic disk converter? Step-by-step guidance is as follows: 

Step 1: Please launch MiniTool Partition Wizard Professional Edition and then in the main interface, you can see all disks listed. Please select the target dynamic disk which shows bad disk here. Then click Convert Dynamic Disk to Basic from Convert Disk menu in the left pane. 

Step 2: Then you can preview the dynamic disk will become a basic disk. Then click Apply to make this operation effective to repair invalid dynamic disk without data loss. 

Then, MiniTool Partition Wizard will inform you to close all other applications before you apply the pending changes. Click Yes to begin the conversion process. 

Run Disk Management

When it comes to the conversion between the dynamic disk and basic disk, some of you probably say: “Can I use Disk Management to do this work? Whether data is safe or not? Any suggestion?” Please look at the guide below to find the answers. 

Step 1: First of all, please run Disk Management by pressing Win + R keys to input compmgmt.msc and then clicking OK to run this disk management tool. 

Step 2: Then right-click the dynamic disk which is invalid, two options including Reactivate disk and Convert to Basic Disk can be used. Please select the second feature to do the conversion. 

We believe you may agree with me:
Converting dynamic disk to basic disk causes data loss with Disk Management. 

If you have recovered data, you can try this tool. Or if there are no important files on your dynamic disk, you can run Windows Disk Management to do the conversion.

On the contrary, it is not recommended to use this free tool which will lead to data loss if many files are saved on the invalid dynamic hard disk before recovering data. Just use MiniTool Partition Wizard to convert to basic disk without losing data. 

Sometimes, you may fail to convert the specified dynamic disk to a normal state from invalid. Just try the next ways.

Solution 3: Import Dynamic Disk Information to another Computer

When mentioning importing dynamic disk information to another PC, many of you don’t know how to do this work. This article How to safely import a dynamic disk can help you. However, it is not simple for this work. In addition, during the process of information importing, the invalid dynamic disk issue often occurs because it is possible that the operating system is not compatible. 

Solution 4: Upgrade to Windows Professional Version

There is no doubt that dynamic disk can not be used in all Windows Home Versions, just like the first reason explains. Therefore, you can upgrade your Windows operating system to Professional Version or a more advanced version from Home Version, and then you are allowed to use the dynamic disk for data storage.

In addition, perhaps you will consider reinstalling OS and then connect the dynamic disk to the new system, nevertheless, this way is time-consuming and you need to reinstall applications or programs. 

“Here are 4 ways can be used to repair dynamic disk invalid. Just choose a proper one according to your needs. And you can share them with your friends on Twitter.”Click to Tweet

Tips of Dynamic Disk Invalid

An Analysis to Basic Disk and Dynamic Disk

You may be curious why the dynamic disk is easy to be invalid. Most of you know basic disk and dynamic disk are two different disk types in Windows. In fact, the disk management mode of the dynamic disk is not the same as the basic disk.

As you know, basic disk refers to a disk that contains partitions for data storage. Windows, Linux and Mac operating systems all support basic disk, moreover, some SD cards also support the management mode of the basic disk. 

However, dynamic disk provides features that the basic disk doesn’t have. For instance, the ability to create different volumes, including simple volume, spanned volume, striped volume, mirrored volume, and RAID 5 volume.

Besides, mirrored volume and RAID 5 volume own an outstanding feature, that is the fault tolerance. Nevertheless, the compatibility of the dynamic disk is not good compared to a basic disk. Consequently, the possibility that dynamic disk encounters such an invalid issue is very high. 

What You Learned

When experiencing “dynamic disk is in invalid status” issue, what can you learn? Pay attention to the three points now: 

1. Please don’t use dynamic disks for data storage in Windows Home Version.
2. It is a good solution to convert your dynamic disk to basic disk. Before you do, recovering data from the target disk is a good choice. 
3. In addition, after fixing this issue, in order to protect data, we suggest you should make a backupof the disk data. To do this, you can use the professional Windows backup software, MiniTool ShadowMaker. This post – How to Back up Files on Windows 10? Try These Top 4 Ways shows you more information.

Bottom Line

Here comes to the end of this article. Right now you must have had a deep understanding of what is dynamic disk invalid issue, why does this issue occur and how to repair invalid dynamic disk without data loss, especially MiniTool Partition Wizard helps you a lot. Hope it can help you when meeting such a problem.

If you have any suggestion to disk 1 dynamic invalid fix or any question regarding MiniTool Partition Wizard, welcome to leave a comment below or email us via [email protected]. Thanks in advance.