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I have a spanned volume on 5 dynamic disks in my current Windows Server 2003. The volume is used to store data only. All the disks are connected via an external SCSI enclosure. I would like to reinstall the OS to Windows Server 2008 and continue using this external SCSI enclosure.

How should I back up the dynamic disk information so that I can minimize the downtime?

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The reason MS "invented" Dynamic Disks was to put the configuration information on the disk itself, so if you migrated the disks from one computer to another, or upgraded the computer, they would still be accessible. You don't need to do anything special, though you might have to assign a drive letter in the new OS via Disk Management (in the Computer or Server Management consoles).

Side note. If any one of those disks goes bad, you lose what's on all of them. 5 disks means roughly 5 times more likely to fail in the same timeframe...

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Yes I am aware of the failure rate issue. The disks are logical disk exported by the RAID enclosure. They are in fact a bunch of disks in RAID6 configuration. Is Dynamic Disks the same as LVM2 in Linux? – Dat Chu Mar 18 '11 at 21:10
I don't know much about Linux, so I don't know. – Chris S♦ Mar 19 '11 at 1:50
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