Unreadable Dynamic Disk

[Cary W]

Well after upgrading my computer and wiping out my main
27.3 gig HDD, then install new hardware and then
installing XP again everything seemed to work fine, then
after I copied some stuff from my 13 gig drive back to
the 27 gig, my machine rebooted and Disk Management
reported my 13 gig as unreadable. Is there any way to
recover the data. I looked into dskprobe to try to fix it
but there wasn't much help there.

Anyone know a good program to recover whats on my 13 gig?

[Joseph Conway \(MSFT\)]

You can try setting the disk back to basic from dynamic in the MBR, it
"should" come back as a basic disk and be readable as long as nothing else
is corrupt.

However, once you manually convert it back you will not be able to reconvert
it to dynamic again. Change the file system bit from 42 to 07

"Cary W" > wrote in message
...
> Well after upgrading my computer and wiping out my main
> 27.3 gig HDD, then install new hardware and then
> installing XP again everything seemed to work fine, then
> after I copied some stuff from my 13 gig drive back to
> the 27 gig, my machine rebooted and Disk Management
> reported my 13 gig as unreadable. Is there any way to
> recover the data. I looked into dskprobe to try to fix it
> but there wasn't much help there.
>
> Anyone know a good program to recover whats on my 13 gig?

[funnyid]

Did the reply to your post from Joseph Conway \(MSFT\) fix your problem (see below)? I think I am in a similar situation.

You can try setting the disk back to basic from dynamic in the MBR, it "should" come back as a basic disk and be readable as long as nothing else
is corrupt.
However, once you manually convert it back you will not be able to reconvert
it to dynamic again. Change the file system bit from 42 to 07

Well after upgrading my computer and wiping out my main
27.3 gig HDD, then install new hardware and then
installing XP again everything seemed to work fine, then
after I copied some stuff from my 13 gig drive back to
the 27 gig, my machine rebooted and Disk Management
reported my 13 gig as unreadable. Is there any way to
recover the data. I looked into dskprobe to try to fix it
but there wasn't much help there.

Anyone know a good program to recover whats on my 13 gig?

[funnyid]

I've been looking all over for someone who has had this problem and fixed it successfully... you may be the one!
Can you elaborate any on your '..."should" come back...' line in your post? Have you seen your suggested MBR hack work?

Here's my situation background: I was getting BSODs way too often on my home-built PC, and I ended up determining that the problem was my 3 year old mobo with the cracked and discolored capacitors. So I upgraded my mobo from a Socket A/AMD 760 EPoX board to a Socket 754/nForce3 Giga-Byte board. In the process, I also had to replace my 1GHz Athlon proc with a 3000+ Athlon64 and I put in 512MB of brand new PC3200 RAM from Crucial. Everything else in the case stayed the same. ("Everything else in the case" = 128MB AGP card, 100MB Zip-Master on IDE0, CD-RW-Slave on IDE0, boot drive-120GB EIDE WD1200JB-Master on IDE1, and my data drive-120GB EIDE WD1200JB-Slave on IDE1)

What Happened Next (details of how my problem arose): After connecting all the old components to the new mobo and powering up, I would get a very brief BSOD (I could never read the actual error) and then the machine would re-boot. I researched the problem and determined that I would have to re-install my WinXP Pro OS on my boot drive (C:\ drive containing only OS and installed apps, approx 90% free space). Due to an unexplained inability to boot from my XP CD (and a failed attempt to use a set of 6 XP boot diskettes I downloaded), I was unable to do the recommended Repair/in-place install of XP. So, figuring that I didn't have any real data on my boot drive, I proceeded to re-install WinXP Pro the only way I knew how: I booted from my old Win2000 install CD, installed Win2000 and then ran the WinXP Pro CD from within Win2000 to perform the upgrade. <bummer> I thought I would re-install XP and be prompted to re-activate, but I could handle that. At least my data would be safe... As a precautionary measure to make sure I wouldn't lose my data, before I began the Win2000 install I disconnected my data drive from its IDE and power cables - just to keep this drive out of the picture entirely until I had my OS re-installed and working. I don't know if this matters or not, but when I did the Win2000 install on my C:\ drive, I formatted it (NTFS) and created a 70GB partition (leaving the rest of the 120GB drive as unpartitioned space). At any rate, the Win2000 install went fine and the subsequent WinXP install/upgrade went fine, too. I installed all of my mobo chipset drivers (LAN, sound chip, etc.) and was ready to connect my data drive.

Here's where things went South: After I connected my data drive (containing approx. 70GB of treasured data) XP did not display this drive in My Computer. I went into the Disk Manager utility to see if the drive showed up at all, and it was there, but it was labeled as "Dynamic, Unreadable". WTF!?!

What I've tried/thought of so far: I have done several hours of research and troubleshooting and have come up with a bunch of possible solutions to this problem. I have tried connecting the drive to a different PC (running Win2000) and it still shows up in Disk Manager as "Dynamic, Unreadable"... so I am left to assume that I am dealing with a corrupt MBR (see http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;320283 ). I have run dmdiag /v and verified that my data drive has a 0x42 system-id byte. I have considered using Diskprobe to manually change this byte in the MBR according to the MS KnowledgeBase instructions. I have thought about just using a boot disk and typing in a FDISK /MBR to reset my MBR (what will this do to my data?). I have even considered downloading and using either MBRtool or DiskPatch 2.0 from http://www.diydatarecovery.nl/ (DiskPatch costs about $50).

Here's where I need help: Given that (1) I have not seen/fixed this problem before, and (2) I DO NOT want to lose my data, I am hesitant to "pull the trigger" and pursue a fix until I am convinced that it will have the desired results (ability to read my drive with no loss of data). I am almost certain that there is nothing mechanically wrong with the drive and I don't think I have done anything (yet) that could have erased any of my precious data. It's just a matter of reading the data, making a back-up of all of it, and then doing whatever I have to do to get my OS to see the drive.

What's the best solution? (Can you elaborate any on '..."should" come back...'? Have you seen your suggested MBR hack work?)

Thank you for any help/advice you can offer.


You can try setting the disk back to basic from dynamic in the MBR, it "should" come back as a basic disk and be readable as long as nothing else is corrupt.

However, once you manually convert it back you will not be able to reconvert
it to dynamic again. Change the file system bit from 42 to 07

"Cary W" wrote in message
...
Well after upgrading my computer and wiping out my main
27.3 gig HDD, then install new hardware and then
installing XP again everything seemed to work fine, then
after I copied some stuff from my 13 gig drive back to
the 27 gig, my machine rebooted and Disk Management
reported my 13 gig as unreadable. Is there any way to
recover the data. I looked into dskprobe to try to fix it
but there wasn't much help there.

Anyone know a good program to recover whats on my 13 gig?