Question on vista disk management?

[ingeborgdot]

I have an external hard drive that will be used for backup. I am not used to the vista management and have a question. In the little box on the left it says Disk 5 Basic Online.
If I right click on it it brings up the box that says convert to dynamic disk and below that convert to GPT disk or MBR disk. On the other box to the right (the long one) if I right click it says New Simple Volume. Anyone care to tell me which to choose? Thanks.

 

[Nodsu]

For an external hard drive, you should most certainly use MBR partitioning for compatibility with other systems.

 

[ingeborgdot]

Ok, can you tell me the difference? Thanks for the help.

 

[Nodsu]

GPT is the "new" and "better" partitioning scheme used by Macs and supported by other newer OS (like Vista). It is not supported by anything older, so you would have to forget about using that drive with Windows 2000, XP, most versions of Linux, etc.

"Dynamic discs" is a Windows way of having "resizable" "partitions" that can be resized and spread across several hard drives. Simple Volume is a part of the dynamic discs scheme. None of this stuff works with anything but newer Windows.