Dynamic disk?

[bertie11]

I've just bought an HP DV6 2113-SA laptop. It has Win7 HP 64 bit installed. As it has a 500 GB hdd I wanted to create a backup partition, leaving about 100gb for the C:\Windows partition. This is so that when I run Acronis True Image 2010 it kept the image to a more manageable size and I needed the backup partition to store the images (I would have also kept a copy elsewhere as well). I also wanted to get as much space on the backup partition so I could do some (basic) video editing.
It wasn't until I installed Acronis that I found that it did not support dynamic disks. Is this due to the Win 7 64 bit version as I also have 32 bit Win 7 which is fine?
I see that Acronis do a Plus pack which give support to dynamic disks but is that the only solution?
I'm normally quite happy with disk imaging but I would hate to foul something up here. I have already shrunk C:\ and created a partition in the unallocated space. Is that OK to do or should I revert back to just C:\? I should also mention that there are D:\Recovery and E:\HP Tools partitions.
I'm confused by this dynamic disk thing as I didn't expect that at all!
Hoping someone can advise.

 

[theog]

You need to use a External Hd for your backups, as if the HD goes down you will loose the backups.

 

[bertie11]

Yes, I did say I would have kept a copy elsewhere.

 

[whs]

How did you get into this dynamic disk mess in the first place. You can use Partition Wizard to convert to a simple logical disk.

 

[bertie11]

Good question. I don't know! I've never used 64 bit Win 7 before so I assumed it would behave like 32 bit only maybe faster. When I got to where I wanted to shrink the C:\ partition It allowed me to use 212Gb as being available from the original 500gb disk. When I told it to create a new partition from the unallocated space it did say something about not being able to use another operating system other than the one already on the boot partition.
As I had no intention of using dual boot in the future I went ahead and it was then I think that things went pear shaped as (this is in Disk Management), all the bars along the top of the disk 0 row turned olive green and all the partitions are now marked dynamic.
All this took me by surprise as I had never heard of this.
So, Acronis won't recognise my disk 0. If I hook up an external disk Acronis will see that and offers to back that up. Not what I want. I just want to back up my C: drive.
I did try Partition Magic but that wouldn't recognise my disk either. But I'm not sure at what point I tried it.
Can I recover from this? I know that I can buy the Plus pack from Acronis which does recognise dynamic disks so all is not lost.
I would like to know what this dynamic stuff is all about. Does it only affect 64 bit?
Thanks for any advice.

 

[bertie11]

A bit more.
I remember now that I used _free_ Partition Wizard which can't convert dynamic disks. Sorry, I've got a lot going on here!

Now I've had a proper look at PW is there likely to be any particular problems I need to be aware of or will it be nice a easy? I need a break here! This is a screenshot of my Disk layout:



Theog.
I'm sorry for my somewhat terse reply to you, I was struggling with this brand new HP system!

Many thanks