From: John Beckett 

"Frank Haber"  wrote in message
news::
> o Does "importing" the dynamic drive "touch" it,
so it's no longer a part of
> the original array?

The last track of each dynamic disk in a computer holds a copy of a
database about ALL the dynamic disks in the computer (I might have the
details wrong, but this is the general idea).

By importing a dynamic disk, I guess that you are wiping the disk database
on the foreign disk, then adding the new disk to the computer, and making a
new database of all the dynamic disks now on the computer. That database is
written to each dynamic disk.

So yes, you are touching the disk and I'm pretty sure it would now be
foreign if you were to return it to the original computer (but you could
import it back into the original computer).

I believe this process is totally safe in that the actual partitions are not touched.

> How about putting an NTFS4 drive in, say, an XP Pro

As Geo said, it would be converted to NTFS5 and should NOT be returned to
an earlier system without reformatting.

> Are there BIOS issues >137GB?

Don't know. Of course one main purpose of a dynamic disk is to avoid BIOS
issues, but you are stuck with the BIOS during boot, so presumably you
could have BIOS issues if the operating system were on a super large disk.

> Do you guys keep exact-same PATA spare drives on the shelf?

As Geo said, if you're using software RAID, the types of disks are not
important. Also, as Antti said, with software RAID you are mirroring or
RAIDing partitions, not disks.

John

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