UPDATED: Windows' 'Dyanmic Disks' and Linux: RAID for both

FuriousGeorge · Apprentice Joined: 03 Mar 2005 Posts: 160

My understanding is that linux can exist on windows dynamic disk, assuming there is LDM support in the kernel. My setup is as follows

sda1,sdb1 -> md1 (/boot, mirrored, primary partition)
sad2,sdb2 -> (extended partition)
sda5-7,sdb5-7 -> md5-7 (rest of linux, some raid0 some raid1)

Then i installed windows for my gf on sda3. Since I cant leave well enough alone I wanted to create a striped volume set for windows to use with 'dynamic disks'.

Obviously, I will be backing up regardless, but I'd like to know what to expect if I make disks that were previously 'basic' into 'dynamic disks'. Will it effect linux in the extended partition, if i have the correct kernel support?

UPDATE: I've been reading this article, which says what I want to do is possible, but is light on specifics. For instance, in the first page it says:

FuriousGeorge · Apprentice Joined: 03 Mar 2005 Posts: 160

I got this working pretty easily.

1> Install windows for girlfriend

2> Set up partitions for windows in 'Disk Management' formatting them and striping or mirroring as you wish.

3> Still in windows set up partitions for Linux as 'raw'. Do not format them, or stripe them, or mirror them, or assign them a drive letter. Just create the partitions.

4> Boot your favorite (gentoo) linux distro. If you don't see the partitions you made in /dev/sd* then your LiveCD doesnt support LDM. Set up your partitions with LVM or mdadm or whatever as per normally.

5> Install and setup Lilo. Grub will not work.

Linux userland tools like fdisk and parted dont understand windows 'dyanmic disks', so plan on creating and destroying partitions in windows. Other than that it works great, and is in my opinion the optimal software raid setup when dual booting.