Widnows XP / Server 2003 does not allow upgrading from basic to dynamic disks on a laptop, reason being in laptops there is usually one hdd and if there are two, one of them is removable and usually far from the pc enough time to make dynamic disks useless.

I have two hdd on a laptop of mine, I put a screw to lock the removable bay of the second one, and I want dynamic disks and raid 1. The option to configure dynamic disks is grayed, and I can't find any ref, official or non official, to what reg key should be modified to make the OS believe it is ok to upgrade to dynamic, or even it is not running on a laptop.

Does anyone happen to know anything about it? Does anyone know how does Windows Server know it is installed on a laptop pc, in the first place? There must be a reg key, but as usual it is going to be a major search effort to find out.

Thank you in advance

I don't know the answer to your question (sorry), but I always wanted to know what the point of the dynamic disk thing was. Always looked kind of useless to me.

Figured, since you want to do it, you'd know what use it was and could explain it to me?

Software RAID.

Dynamic disks is simply a fancy name for it.

Ah. Gotcha. I don't seem to remember it being called "Dynamic Disks" back in the NT4 days when I tried software RAID, noticed it sucked, and completely gave up on it.

It's probably similar to LVM (Linux Volume Manager), which is used as the underlayment for RAID on many systems. But on Linux it also allows dynamic (while in use) resizing (growing) of filesystems and the like. I suspect the MS implementation is similar.

Cheers

Right. As Drakino said, mainly raid: 0,1,5 . I am personally interested in a plain and simple raid 1 on a laptop, for a number of reasons.
Never tested back at NT times. It is now quite reliable and light in terms of cpu usage.

Thank you all the same Tony.

For the record: update.
Windows Server is taking the "laptop" status from the ACPI. By instaling Windows "manually" (F5 during installation - when the system prompts you to hit F6 if you want to install extra scsi drivers), you'll be presented with a menu that offers you a number of options for manually setting up single/double processor, ACPI, and more. The OS installs itself in the "mode" you select. By disabling ACPI it will never know if it is on a laptop or on any other machine, and Dynamic Volumes are back.

Now I have to find a way to disable ACPI without reinstalling the OS. If there is one...

Oh, true, it's the HAL that differs. I have little hope not to reinstall. I imagine I should replace the HAL file(s) (and kernel?) with those from a non ACPI installation, and I dont' really know if even the recovery console lets you do that. I doubt. Probably installing the hdd in another machine...

Well, if anyone has an idea on how to do this, you're going to have my deepest gratitude Otherwise, you'll have my gratitude while I reinstall. Where's my installation CD?

Use caution when messing with that ACPI stuff. If the HAL differs from the computer, it can render the OS unbootable and is a pain to fix (although there are MSKB articles on the topic if you need to).

My desktop PC at home has the ability to enable/disable ACPI support in the BIOS.