Convert GPT Dynamic Disk to Basic Disk

During the process of using GPT file system to manage Windows partitions, lots of Windows users are bothered because they don’t know the way to convert GPT dynamic disk to basic disk. Since Windows built-in disk management tool has functional defection, it can only convert GPT dynamic disk to basic when no dynamic volume exists in GPT dynamic disk, failing meeting the GPT disk management requirements. Here, lots of Windows computer users think of using professional partition magic software to convert GPT dynamic disk to basic disk, but the fact is not that simple. Lots of professional partition magic software has functional defects, for instance, don’t support operations on GPT disk or dynamic disk or can only convert GPT dynamic disk to basic when no dynamic volume exists in GPT dynamic disk. Therefore, many Windows users desire a piece of partition magic software which helps convert GPT dynamic disk to basic disk. Now, as partition management software technology becomes maturity, the professional partition magic software which can convert GPT dynamic disk to basic disk emerged – MiniTool Partition Wizard. As long as users own this professional partition magic software, you can convert GPT dynamic disk to basic disk with ease.

Use MiniTool Partition Wizard to convert GPT dynamic disk to basic disk
To convert GPT dynamic disk to basic disk with professional partition magic software MiniTool Partition Wizard, users should firstly visit the official website of this software https://www.partitionwizard.com/, and then install and start it to see the main interface below:



After entering the main interface of this professional partition magic software MiniTool Partition Wizard, if users want to convert GPT dynamic disk to basic disk, choose the partition to convert and click “Convert Dynamic Disk to Basic”.



Here, users can see GPT dynamic disk is already converted into basic disk and three pending operations emerges in “Operations” area. To complete all operations, users just need to click “Apply”. After that, users thoroughly convert GPT dynamic disk to basic disk with the professional partition magic software MiniTool Partition Wizard.

[Solved] - The File Is Too Large for the Destination File System

Failed to Copy/Download a File

Question: "I have a large pst file (it has grown to 7 GB).. I am unable to copy this file to an alternate location. I need to take a backup of this file and want to access this file on another computer loaded with Microsoft outlook. Could you please suggest the best way to do this?
Many Thanks,
Prem"

When saving large files to either local hard disk or removable device, you may receive the error “File is too large for destination file system”. If study this code closely, you will find that this problem always occurs on files of which the file sizes are larger than 4GB. In this case, you may wonder what could possibly cause this issue. In this post, we will introduce the reason as well as corresponding solution. 

Why File Is too Large for Destination File System

Why "The file system is too large for the destination file system"? To answer this question, we need some basic knowledge about the file systems in Windows at first.

1. What is file system?

File system is the way and structure that operating system used to identify and organize the files on the disk. It is also used to refer to the disk or partition that stores files, or the type of file system. In Windows, the most commonly seen file systems are exFAT, FAT, FAT32, and NTFS. What are their differences?

2. About FAT, FAT32, exFAT and NTFS.

FAT, also known as FAT16, is a simple and robust file system. It does offer good performance but still cannot provides the same performance, scalability and reliability as the later file systems. For FAT, the maximum file size of a single file it supports is 2GB.

FAT32 is a file system suitable for small capacity hard disk. For FAT32, the maximum file size of a single file it supports is 4GB. The advantage of FAT32 is that it has the best compatibility can be applied on many platforms.

exFAT, also known as FAT64, is a file system that introduced in Windows Embedded 5.0 and above (including Windows CE 5.0/6.0, Windows Mobile5/6/6.1) by Microsoft. exFAT was rolled out to fill the gap of FAT32 and is more suitable for flash memory. However, it has bad compatibility and can be recognized by a few OS.

NTFS is the most widely used file system in PC currently. For NTFS, the maximum file size of a single file it supports reach up to 16TB. NTFS is recommended to be applied on large capacity external hard drives.

Today the most popular file systems in Windows are FAT32 and NTFS. Below is a table showing their differences.



"You know the differences between FAT32 and NTFS? Obviously NTFS is more comply with the tendency of the day."
Click to tweet

3. Why file is too large for destination file system?

By saying all of the above, you must have realized the point. Yes you guessed it right. If you save files larger than 2GB to FAT16 partition or save files bigger than 4GB to FAT32 partition, the error “File is too large for destination file system” will emerge. Under these kinds of situations, the best way is to convert file system. 

How to Convert File System without Losing Data

Generally, users will be allowed to change file system when formatting partition, but this will lead to data loss. Aiming at this situation, we give a solution which helps to convert FAT to NTFS or NTFS to FAT without losing any data. That is to make use of the free partitioning software - MiniTool Partition Wizard free edition. Note: this program is free for non server users only. For server support, you need to employ the server edition. 

Step 1: Run this free partitioning software to get the main window.  Here, we take converting FAT32 partition to NTFS partition for example, so we need to select the partition whose file system is FAT32 and choose “Convert FAT to NTFS” feature.



Step 2: After that, the following interface will appear: 



Step 3: Click “Start” button to start converting file system. When the free partitioning software shows the conversion is completed, the work is done. 

Now you see MiniTool Partition Wizard makes it so easy and safe to switch file system. Next time when you see the error message “File is too large for the destination file system” again, try taking this solution. Also, you can use this freeware to convert NTFS to FAT without data loss. For video help, please see Convert FAT to NTFS. 

There Are Several Ways to Convert MBR Disk to GPT Disk

Compared with MBR formatted disk, GPT disks have these advantages: support hard disks or partitions larger than 2TB, support creating up to 128 partitions in Windows, own 2 partition tables, etc. Therefore, GPT disk becomes more and more welcome. Aiming at this trend, we will show users several ways to convert MBR disk to GPT disk after partitions have been created.

How to Change MBR disk to GPT disk in Disk Management

Firstly, backup all needed data on the MBR disk. Then, open Windows Disk Management console by taking these operations: right click “Computer” icon on the desktop, choose “Manage”, and select “Disk Management”. Next, delete all existing partitions one by one and make the entire hard disk unallocated. Next, right click the MBR disk and choose “Convert to GPT Disk”.

How to Convert MBR Disk to GPT Disk in Diskpart

Click Start menu, type diskpart in Search box, right click the diskpart.exe and choose Run as administrator to open this tool:



Then type the following commands successively: list disk → select disk n (n is the number of the target disk) → clean → convert gpt.

Note: this solution will also delete all partitions, so users need to backup all important files in advance.

In order to help users change MBR disk to GPT disk without deleting any partition and data, we suggest using the free partitioning software MiniTool Partition Wizard. Detailed steps are as follows.

How to Convert MBR Disk to GPT Disk with MiniTool Partition Wizard

Firstly, launch the freeware to get the following interface:



Here, please select the MBR disk which needs converting and then choose “Convert MBR Disk to GPT Disk” from the left pane. Note: sometimes converting system disk to GPT is not allowed, which is for system protection.



Now we can see the MBR disk has been changed to GPT disk, but it is only a preview effect MiniTool Partition Wizard provides. At this time, please click “Apply” button on the top to perform all changes. For more information about disk converting, please see Convert MBR Disk to GPT Disk.

Partition external hard drive

When using multiple external hard drives to extend computer storage space, you may have to convert all external hard drives to dynamic disks for the sake of convenient management. Although this operation will facilitate managing external hard drive partitions, how to manage dynamic disks? As the long-term users of Windows operating system know, the third-party partition magic is unnecessary if we want to do well in basic disk partition management under Windows operating system. And it's the same in dynamic disk partition management. Therefore, I recommend employing the powerful partition magic software, MiniTool Partition Wizard. It is developed by famous MiniTool Solution Ltd., and its latest version is perfectly compatible with dynamic disk. For more details, please visit its official website https://www.partitionwizard.com/.

What is dynamic disk?
Dynamic disk has been used since Windows 2000 due to its excellent performance. Compared with basic disk, it is more flexible in management and use features, for example, no limitation on partition quantity and partition size, data fault-tolerant function, high-speed read-write operation, free resize partition, merge multiple disk spaces into one partition, and so on.

How to upgrade external hard drive from basic disk to dynamic disk
Now that dynamic disk has so many advantages, how to upgrade external hard drive from basic disk to dynamic disk? Take Windows Server 2003 for example. Firstly, enter disk management interface of Windows Server 2003, and all the hard disks connected to computer are listed. Select the external hard derive which will be upgraded to dynamic disk, and right click, as what showed below:



Click "Convert to Dynamic Disk…" on pop-up menu to see option box below:



Confirm the desired external hard drive, and then click "OK" to upgrade it from basic disk to dynamic disk.
Note: converting external hard drive from basic disk to dynamic disk has no influence on partition data, but the converse operation will cause all partitions and data to lose.

Use MiniTool Partition Wizard to manage external hard drive partition upgraded as dynamic disk
Before using MiniTool Partition Wizard to manage the upgraded dynamic disk, please visit its website to download the latest version, and install it on the hard disk partition not to be operated. After that, please run MiniTool Partition Wizard to see interface below:



On the main interface of MiniTool Partition Wizard, click any partition on dynamic disk, all dynamic disk partition management function such as create volume, delete volume, format volume, move/resize volume, resize volume, wipe volume, volume properties, explore volume, change volume label, change volume letter, change volume cluster size, check file system and so on will appear on the action panel marked with red box. Users can use the corresponding function module, and then finish dynamic disk management according to its operation prompts.

As a matter of fact, MiniTool Partition Wizard not only has complete function, but also has high security and simple operations. What's more, MiniTool Partition Wizard can perfectly manage your external hard drive partition no matter it is basic disk or dynamic disk. Therefore, MiniTool Partition Wizard can be your best choice.

New simple volume

If you don't know how to create a new volume on dynamic disk, or you get stuck on the complicated operations, why not turn to MiniTool Partition Wizard? If you want to create new simple volume on the dynamic disk, only one dynamic disk is needed. And the simple volume is similar to basic disk partition and using MiniTool Partition Wizard to create new simple volume is very easy.
MiniTool Partition Wizard can not only help users create simple volume, but also manage the existing volumes. It has very complete dynamic disk management functions, such as create new simple volume, delete simple volume, resize simple volume, and wipe volume data, and so on. To learn more details, please visit its official website https://www.partitionwizard.com/.

The reason of creating new simple volume
Now that the simple volume of dynamic disk is similar with basic disk partition, why do we create it? That is because simple volume can be managed more conveniently than basic disk partition. When users extend partition or volume, the partition can only be extended to the adjacent unallocated space. But volume can be extended to any unallocated space on disk, which greatly improves the flexibility of extending volume size. At the same time, basic disk has limitation that partition can only have 4 primary partitions or 3 primary partitions and 1 extended partition, and it also limits the partition size. However, dynamic disk doesn't limit the volume quantity and volume size, which makes the use of dynamic disk more convenient and efficient.

Use Disk Management Tool (Utility) of Windows to create new simple volume
To use Disk Management Tool (Utility) of Windows to create new simple volume, enter Windows Computer Management interface firstly, and then choose the desired dynamic disk and right click:



As shown above, click "New Volume…" on pop-up menu, and New Volume Wizard will appear. Please follow its prompts to set properties for new created simple volume.



Here, set size for new created volume. Firstly, convert volume size unit to MB, and then input it. After that, click "Next" to enter following steps. When Operations are completed, click "My Computer" to see the new simple volume. Then users can use it.

Create new simple volume with MiniTool Partition Wizard
Before using MiniTool Partition Wizard to create new simple volume, please visit its official website to download it and then install it. After that, follow these steps:
1. Run MiniTool Partition Wizard to enter main interface:



2. Select dynamic disk and right click, and then choose "Create Volume" to enter Create Volume Wizard.
3. Choose "Simple".
4. Select the dynamic disk used to create new simple volume.
5. Set basic properties for new simple volume, such as volume label, file system, drive letter, clusters size and volume size and so on. What differs from Window Disk Management Tool is that the partition handle of MiniTool Partition Wizard can be dragged to resize volume directly, avoiding the trouble of converting storage unit.



6. Click "Apply" to perform all operations.
After that, the operations of creating new simple volume on dynamic disk are completed.

Just by clicking mouse, you can easily create new simple volume on dynamic disk with MiniTool Partition Wizard. And its preview function facilitates finding and correcting accidental operations in time. Go to its official website to download this perfect partition magic software.

Tips For NTFS Data Recovery That Will Satisfy Your Needs

As the default file system of Windows NT family, NTFS (New Technology File System) naturally becomes the first choice of people and it is popular and frequently used around the world. It is not even unfamiliar to inexperienced computer users.

Why? That is because, compared to other file systems like FAT (File Allocation Table), NTFS has many advantages. For instance:

• Support sparse file.
• Support disk quotas.
• Support a maximum capacity of 2TB.
• Support active directories and domains.
• Provide better disk compression approach.
• Be able to give permissions to a single file/folder.
• Be capable of compressing individual files/folders.
• Adopt B-Tree structure to accelerate file access rate.
• Provide file encryption to improve the security of information.

That explains why NTFS is more popular than FAT among computer users. Indeed, more and more people prefer to format their new partitions into NTFS rather than FAT nowadays since the former is claimed to have so many advantages. Even some FAT partition users choose to convert their partitions from FAT to NTFS.

Tips: in some special cases like Xbox 360 can only support FAT partition, people may need to convert NTFS partition to FAT instead.

After investigation, we found this contributes a lot to the appearance of issues related to FAT data recovery and NTFS data recovery.

File Loss during Conversion between FAT and NTFS

Upon seeing the market of mutual conversion between FAT and NTFS, many developers have seized the opportunity quickly, thus a wide variety of FAT to NTFS converters appear and become available on the internet. But, here comes the problem – some converters are not qualified enough so it keeps destroying users’ data saved in both FAT and NTFS partitions. Thus, the demand for NTFS data recovery is very high.



After choosing superior converters to change partitions from FAT to NTFS or vice versa, users may find themselves been left in limbo: some important data are gone or partitions become inaccessible. So, they’re in dire need of knowing how to finish NTFS recovery, NTFS file recovery, FAT recovery and FAT file recovery.

By the way, here’s a tool that can help you convert between FAT and NTFS safely.

Other Causes for NTFS Data Loss

In addition to file system conversion, there’re also many other reasons that could lead to file loss on NTFS partition. Now, we’re going to show you the common causes by dividing them into 2 different categories.

Data in NTFS partition is lost directly because of certain reasons: users’ mistaken deletion of useful files, virus deletion of important data, sudden loss of files due to system crashes and failures, and so on. In reality, data always get lost in a flash, leaving no chance for us to cool down. And the only thing we can do to make up for it is starting NTFS file recovery right away, in order to recover as much files we need as possible.

Deleted Files by Accident

“ So... a few months ago I cleaned my HDD a bit by removing a bunch of folders, but much to my frustration, I accidentally deleted an important file that was among them as well.

I've seen there are a few programs that can recover files that were emptied from the recycle bin, but do they really work? I'm really desperate to recover this one file of mine to the point I could even pay a professional to recover it for me.

How can I recover the files? I'd really appreciate if someone could help me on this.”

This is asked by synnchan on ; his question can be summarized as how to recover deleted files after Recycle Bin was emptied.



Yes, to check Recycle Bin is definitely the right thing to do after you find you’ve made a mistake in pressing wrong buttons to delete files or choosing the wrong files to delete. Under some circumstances (the files are deleted by “delete” only, not “shift + delete” and the files are deleted from hard disk, not flash disk), the deleted files will be saved in Recycle Bin. And this is an important reason why Recycle Bin is designed.

If you failed to find deleted files in Recycle Bin, the next step is choosing high-quality software to start completely deleted files recovery ASAP. Please note that you should stop using the disk immediately in order to avoid lost files being overwritten disaster.

Files Deleted by Virus

“Everytime I put any flash disk, hard disk, or rewriteable CD, the virus worked by deleting some of my files in that external hard disk. And my flash disk becomes shortcut icon like this: "(externaldrivename)15GB". Anyone can help me please?”
– from Cint

With we’re more and more relying on internet, it’s getting harder and harder to stay away from computer viruses; they’re hidden everywhere we could think of: links, emails, files, folders, etc. So lots of users’ computer have already installed with an anti-virus program when the system is firstly installed.



But, our advice is not to use anti-virus program to kill virus until files deleted by virus have been completely recovered since the virus killing process may delete other existing files.

Files Lost after Sudden Failure

“I have a windows 7 ultimate 64 bit on Lenovo B560 laptop. Yesterday i downloaded Bluetooth driver from the Lenovo site, when the already installed driver was not working and also not getting updated. When i was installing the driver, after some time it seemed as if the system has hanged. So i ended the process through start task manager, thinking to reinstall it. As soon i ended it, i saw many of the files on my system were missing. I tried everything possible to repair, but ultimately i had to reinstall windows.

Now my major problem is all the data and software on my system are gone and i have no idea how to recover it. I do not have any system image or as such any backups. I handled any blunders in the past through system restore but that is not working.”
– from curiousmind on

This is a kind of situation in which users don’t even have a clue how the files are missing; they just get lost “mysteriously”, as many users described. And as long as the lost files are not responsible for booting system, users can start the computer as usual.



In fact, even if users couldn’t boot system after booting files were lost somehow, we still have a way to help them get back data from non-bootable computer – using MiniTool Power Data Recovery Boot Disk. As for how to restore data from NTFS partition and how to repair NTFS partition (or other partitions types), we’ll discuss later.


You may download the bootable edition to scan your computer hard disk to find out whether your needed data can be found or not. If it does find useful data, please buy a license to continue.

Click this for X86-based CPU; click this for X64-based CPU.

Data is lost because the NTFS partition which saves it is in trouble. As you’re about to see, this category includes mainly 2 situations – target partition is missing due to accidental deletion or other reasons; NTFS partition becomes damaged & inaccessible. This is going to ruin more data.

Partition Is Deleted/Lost

“I accidentally deleted the NTFS partition on my win home premium 64bit hard drive... I now need to recover it, but all the tools out there you have to pay for it to make it work fully, please help... hard drive is blank.”
– from Saulokillo11

In this case, obviously, the user didn’t plan to delete NTFS partition, but he did it due to carelessness. Now, he’s in need of great solutions to make up for the mistake. He said he was not able to find a tool that could work fully. Yet, that is until now.



Here, we’d like to introduce this free data recovery software that could help him with NTFS partition recovery definitely – MiniTool Power Data Recovery. It acts similarly to the Installation Wizard that Windows computer users are quite familiar with. So, there’s no need worrying too much even if you’re a complete novice.

Just follow the step-by-step instructions you could see on each interface to complete NTFS repair easily. After all desired files are restored to safe place, you can choose to create new NTFS partitions directly or recover NTFS partitions with MiniTool Partition Wizard, “Partition Recovery” feature.

Tips 1: (this can also be found in the product introduction page) the free edition of above recommended NTFS data recovery software has a limitation – it can only recover 1GB data for totally free; to break it, you’ll have to buy license for other editions like personal edition.

Tips 2: as we have said previously, if you need to perform NTFS recovery on non-bootable computer, the bootable edition should be chosen.

Spanned volume

Spanned volume is a method for disk capacity management on dynamic disk. If you want to create a larger volume, but the dynamic disk space is insufficient, you can merge unallocated spaces on multiple dynamic disks into one volume with enough size by creating spanned volume. And the spanned volume can occupy different spaces on different dynamic disk, which facilitates extending spanned volume at any time. Here, MiniTool Partition Wizard, the powerful and professional partition magic software developed by MiniTool Solution Ltd, is recommended to help users create and manage spanned volume.

Volume types on dynamic disk
Dynamic disk has been introduced by Microsoft since Widows 2000 operating system. It has more flexibility and features than common basic disk. Before using dynamic disk, you must distribute disk capacity, but the distributed area is called volume, which is different from basic disk. Dynamic disk provides 5 types of volumes:

Simple volume: simple volume exists on sole dynamic disk. Simple volume is similar to partition in basic disk, but simple volume has no limitation on quantity and space size.

Spanned volume: spanned volume includes two or more dynamic disks (32 dynamic disks at most). By creating spanned volume, you can merge multiple unallocated spaces of physical disks into one logical volume so as to utilize space resources of multiple disks efficiently.

Striped volume: Striped volume also includes two or more dynamic disks (32 dynamic disks at most). But striped volumes must occupy equal size on every dynamic disk. When users write data into striped volume, data will be divided into data block of 64KB, and then different data block will be written into in each disk in the array. Thus, disk performance and file read efficiency are greatly improved.

Mirrored volume: Mirrored volume includes two dynamic disk spaces with equal size. When we restore data, one space is used to restore working data, and the other stores the data transcript at the same time. Although mirrored volume owns higher fault tolerance, the space utilization rate is 50%.

RAID5: RAID 5 is a striped volume with parity check code. It includes 3 dynamic disks at least, and 32 dynamic disks at most. It is an advanced volume integrating with performance of striped volume and fault tolerance of mirrored volume.

How to use MiniTool Partition Wizard to create spanned volume on Windows Server 2003?
Since plenty of data is stored in server, greater partition space is desired to store important data. However, if one disk can't meet your space requirement, merging multiple disk spaces into one spanned volume is your best choice. How to use MiniTool Partition Wizard to create spanned volume under Windows Server 2003 server operating system?

Firstly, visit its official website https://www.partitionwizard.com/ to download and install this server partition magic. After that, run MiniTool Partition Wizard and see interface below:



This is main interface of MiniTool Partition Wizard. To create spanned volume, please right click dynamic disk used to create spanned volume. And then select "Create Volume" on pop-up menu, the following interface will appear:



Please check "Spanned" on this interface and then click "Next >" to move on.



There are two display lists. The left one shows all dynamic disks on your computer, and the right one is the dynamic disk selected to create spanned volume. In order to select desired dynamic disk, users just need to choose disk on the left display list, and then click "Add >" to display it on right list. After that, click "Next >" to go on:



Set basic properties such as volume label, file system, drive letter, cluster size and volume size for the desired spanned volume. By dragging partition handle, users can easily resize volume. After that, click "Finish" to return to main interface.



Now, users can see new spanned volume on the partition list. However, it's just preview, if you want to realize it, please click "Apply" to perform all your operations.

MiniTool Partition Wizard is powerful and professional server partition magic. It not only can help you create and manage spanned volume, but also help users create and manage any other types of partition on basic disk or volumes on dynamic disk. Go to its official website to download it, and learn more about MiniTool Partition Wizard.