Dynamic Harddrive HELP

[RacecarBMW]

So I have a couple of questions but first I would like to tell you guys what happened.

I wanted to install Ubuntu on my brand new 4 day old laptop. I have already installed Ubuntu and other linux distros on many other computers with no problems at all.

So I went to partition the Harddrive and it already had 4 Partitions.
-System (199 MB)
- C: (899 GB)
- Recovery (27.55 GB)
- HP_Tools (3.97 GB)

I decided to shrink my C drive to around 400 GB and create a new partition for Ubuntu with the remaining space.

I successfully manage to shrink the C drive and then I went to create a partition with the remaining space. This is where I did something stupid. A window came up and said yes or cancel I didn't read it and clicked yes after that all my partitions turned into Dynamic drives as opposed to basic.

I have done a bit of research and can't seem to find anything wrong with having a dynamic drive. I backed up everything just in case and restarted my computer and everything is running smoothly. Except for a little feature called HP QUICKWEB. This is not related to Windows. From what I found it is is a separate OS based off Linux. When the computer is off you press a little button near the power button and it boots into this OS it is supposed to be really fast and good on the battery. This feature no longer works after the dynamic drive incident.

Questions:
1.Can I convert back to a basic drive without erasing all my data? Most online tutorials say I must format

2.What even are Dynamic drives advantages/disadvantages

3. Can I install Ubuntu on a Dynamic Drive? (I didn't install it after the partition because if I have to format my harddrive again there is no point)

4. Why did HP QUICKWEB stop working?

This is my harddrive if it matters Toshiba MK1059GSMP

Thank you for reading it all

 

[Grayfox]

You're main issue is you can't really install linux without changing the way HP installs things.

A normal drive that uses a MBR can have 4 primary partitions which you have, in order for you to install linux you must have 1 extended partition and then you can an unlimited number of partitions in this extended partition(assuming you have a mount point available to use them( a mount point is a drive letter or number))

System holds the boot info for widows(Partition 1)
Windows is your OS(Partition 2)
Recovery(Partition 0)
HP_Tools(Partition 3)

If you remove HP_Tools(not recommended) you will have only 4 GiB or so which means you have to shrink Windows down more.

Best thing to do is get a second drive and install linux on to that which i still do not recommend if you do not know what you are doing.

As for the Quickweb i do not know where it stores its system files but it is either disabled in the bios or the change from basic to dynamic messed up some files it needs.

Only way i have fixed a dynamic drive is by going into diskpart and selecting the disk in question and running the "clean" command this will wipe the MFT, boot records so the drive will have 931GiB of unpartitioned space and you will need to recreate the partitions.

Try pressing F11 when you power up your machine and see if the HP Recovery still works, otherwise you will need to burn off the disks.

If this doesn't work only other thing i can think of is to set the Recovery drive as ACTIVE this will make the bios boot from it at start up and it will load the recovery.

I will only tell you how do this if needed.

http://www.partitionwizard.com/help/convert-dynamic-disk-to-basic-disk.html

 

[RacecarBMW]

I actually made recovery disks on the first day of purchase

Can I remove my recovery partition then shrink C drive and use the remaining space from the shrink and recovery for linux?

Can I just leave it as a dynamic drive if it doesn't cause any other problems and install Ubuntu on the 5th partition as intended in the beginning?

 

[Grayfox]

You can't add a 5th primary partition to a drive that is formatted to be a MBR type.
You will need a GUID type to do this and it needs a format.


Do not remove the recovery, and general layout of OE machines i have seen is <recovery>[system](windows){Other}.

Plus when you install linux on the current drive it will add its own bootsector which will remove the windows one.

And since you are going to install Ubuntu which i have tested you will shoot your self in the face because it doesn't really give an option to edit the GRUB boot loader it will install.

If it does tell it to install on the installed partition boot sector this will leave the windows one alone.
which will be something like sdc or something.

 

[BobK]

System holds the boot info for widows(Partition 1)
Windows is your OS(Partition 2)

When did Windows start taking up two partitions instead of one? Is this something new that Windows 7 does?

 

[Grayfox]

Vista and 7 use a 100MB partition to hold the BCD information(this boots windows and may also hold the repair my computer(never bothered to fully see what is on this partiton))

Windows 8 will have a 350MB one.