Volumes on dynamic disks can have simple volume layout that can use free space of a single disk. A simple volume is allowed to be extended within the same disk or onto set of additional disks, without even restarting the computer system. This is usually performed to gain more disk space. Volume thus extended across multiple disks is called a spanned volume. Spanning of simple volume is restricted to a constraint that it is possible only if the volume is formatted to NTFS file system and not FAT file system. Though, you can initially create a spanned volume across a set of disks using either of the file system, but the one formatted with FAT will not be able to extend or span further to gain more disk space. The same issue also occurs if you are using a volume that has existed as a basic disk before it is upgraded to dynamic disk. Due to these reasons, if you desire to span or extend such volume, you will need to reformat or recreate it and restore data from backup later. However, while a valid backup is unavailable, you need to use data recovery software to recover the lost data.

To illustrate the issue, consider that you try to extend or span a FAT formatted simple or spanned volume in Windows 2000, but fail to do so. You might also observe that when you attempt to FAT or NTFS formatted simple or spanned volume, you get the below error message:

"The selected volume was originally created on a basic disk and cannot be extended. Only volumes originally created on dynamic disks can be extended."

This error is observed with the volume that has been upgraded to dynamic volume.

Cause

Such volumes lack the ability of extending or spanning because they still keep their partition table entries in MBR. Windows 2000 uses this entry to install to the dynamic volume and boot from. Only system and boot volumes are allowed to be installed or upgraded to dynamic disks by Setup.

Solution

To regain the ability of extending or spanning, you need to reformat the volume formatted to FAT If the volume has existed as a basic disk before it is upgraded to dynamic disk, you need to delete it and recreate it on the dynamic disk

Use your recent data backup to restore the data thus lost or scan the disk using a powerful Disk Recovery Software while valid backup unavailability. Competent to perform safe Partition Recovery, these are suitable Data Recovery products in all cases of logical data loss.

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