wacky.banana

The drive in question is a dynamic data drive, not my system drive.

Had reason to re-nstall windows onto the system drive. Before I did that I checked to make sure that the data drive was intact and functioning ok.

With XP installed on the system drive I look for the data drive in explorer, no sign. Go to administrative tools and I see a message that says the drive is unreadable.

Have scanned the drive with maxtor tools and it has absolutely no errors on it.

Anyone know what the problem is and therefore the solution please? Never had this problem before using this configuration. If I can get the drive back on line I can at least move the latest pieces of data to another drive then reformat it.

TIA for your help.

WB

davedipster

Whats a dynamic data drive? is it a usb external hard drive?

wacky.banana

No, its an internal formatted IDE drive that XP sees as a dynamic disk, as opposed to a basic disk.

davedipster

Do you have xp pro or home?

Suresh

Had an unrecoverable disk error a few months back on my desktop IDE drive. XP installed on the the 2nd drive couldn't do anything with it, but a DOS bootdisk could. So I got the data off it with in one go with XCopy and binned the IDE disk

wacky.banana

Suresh,

Talk me through this please as I don't want to knacker the drive before I get some data off. This is a 200GB drive, formatted as NTFS.

In answer to Dipster, its XP professional.

WB

jods

Yeah Suresh is on the right lines.

You could try hitting F8 when booting up and use Safe mode with Networking.
You should then have a view on the data on the second drive. Use XCOPY from DOS to your Native Hard disk.

So if your main drive is C:\ and your 2nd Drive is D:\ with data in D:\my docs\data\

On C:\ create a folder called \recoveryfeb2007

use (from command prompt) XCOPY d:\my docs\data C:\recoveryfeb2007


I think

Oh get to command prompt from START, RUN [type] CMD [enter]

DJ Dunk

iTrader: (5)

I had the very same thing happen and ended up using file recovery software (OnTrack Easy Recovery Pro) to pull all the data back. Got everything back file, albeit with different timestamps.

If you search for "dynamic disk unreadable xp" in Google you'll see how common a problem it is. If you can't "Import" the disk, file recovery is the simplest option. Then just reformat the drive as Basic.

davedipster

Learn something new every day!

wacky.banana

Guys,

Its been years since I used DOS so my memory is a bit hazy. Will XCOPY copy datta off a drive this size formatted as an NTFS partition? I thought DOS could only see FAT32 partitions?

Oops, just seen DJ Dunks response. Question stands though.

wacky.banana

Right,

Been to look at this drive in safe mode, still can't see it. Can't see it in DOS either, which is strange. Ay mor ideas please?

Thanks

WB

davedipster

Not much help, but I'm glad I use an ide basic disc for my backups.

What is the advantage of these dynamic things?

wacky.banana

If I use the command diskpart I can list the disks. However the disk in question does not have a volume so I cannot re-assign a drive letter to it (one of the suggested solutions from elsewhere). Also because I cannot see the drive any other way in DOS then I can't XCOPY.

The only copy of easy recovery pro I can get is the demo one which does sweet fa. To purchase is over $600. Have tried Microsoft's suggestion about changing values in the local registry keys but that did not work either.

Any more suggestions on disk data recovery tools that are capable of seeing the drive and moving data off?

Many thanks

WB

DJ Dunk

iTrader: (5)

YHPM

wacky.banana

YHPM back.

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

You could try a Linux boot CD and see if that can see the drive - there are various distros that can be run straight from the CD without the need to install anything on your PC. If so then you could use that to copy the data to another drive. (nb. although they can all read NTFS, not all distros can read/write it yet - you'll need to copy back to a FAT32 partition or a DVD).

wacky.banana

Andy,

Good idea never thought of that. I have mMandrake & Ubuntu lying around somewhere. Will look at this after I have exhausted all other options.

Thanks

WB

wacky.banana

AndyC_772,

Knoppix is able to see the data on the drive and seemingly move some of it to another drive. However once I boot out of Knoppix and into XP, XP can't see the transferred files on the new drive.

Have changed properties to show hidden files but no joy.

Any ideas?

TIA

WB

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

How is the new drive formatted? If it's ext3 rather than FAT32 then XP won't be able to read it without a driver. You'll need a FAT32 partition as it's the only format that Linux can write and Windows can read.

Failing that, do you have a network fileserver you could copy data onto instead?

mike1210

with the right plugins with windows OS's

Bart's Preinstalled Environment (BartPE) bootable live windows CD/DVD

I use this with Ghost 8.3, ERD commander 2005 and GetdataBack for FAT and NTFS

wacky.banana

Andy,

The drive I am writing to is formated as an NTFS drive, using Partition Magic 8. Knoppix seems to be able to write to it ok (I guess using SAMBA) which is why I am puzzled as to why XP can't see the written data.

I did try formating the recepient drive as FAT32 but a lot of my larger files would not go across. I kept getting "disk full" error mssages from Knoppix, which can't be the case.

WB

Mike 1201,

Will see what BART can do. I can't tell you how frustraing this is when I have loads of other things I need to be getting on with.

Appreciate all the help offered so far. Keep the suggestions coming in.

Who knows, this may turn into a really useful FAQ at some point. (got to keep my sense of humour going else I will take a hammer to this blasted drive!!)

Suresh

w.b, I see this has moved on from just trying simple DOS solutions. If it helps anyone else, I made my boot disks from files here: Bootdisk.Com - Free NTFS Boot disk, Boot Disk, Windows boot disk, XP Bootdisk, DOS Bootdisk

I had a FAT32 problem which was more-easily fixed than poor w.b's diffulties here.

Luminous

iTrader: (3)

I think this may be due to file encryption. You have XP Pro, and that allows files to be encrypted. Its possible that all you need is the encryption key in order to be able to see the files again. Or, alternatively, a way to copy the original files, but not copy the encryption.

My knowledge on this topic is a little hazy, as I stopped using encryption for my files after some data loss. One thing that is for certain is that in order for Window standard encryption to be used it requires an NTFS partition. Therefore, if you have any program that can read the original files, and can copy it to a FAT32 partition, as an example, the encryption would be removed during the copying process.


See what others thing of this idea before you go wasting lots of time preparing a FAT32 partition to receive the data.

wacky.banana

Ok Guys, Update.

Massive success here using Mart 1210's solution, ie BART PE. I can now see the drive, which was a major issue with the other solutions offered here (apart from Linux) and am in the process of copying the data off to other drives.

You can do this 2 ways; either boot off the bootable CD and do the transfers or run the cd from within XP. Strange thing is if you take the latter option then run XP's file explorer you get to see the unreadable drive within XP. Now I ask you, what the hell is that all about? Boot out of BART PE though and its back to normal, ie XP can't see the drive.

Suresh, thanks for the link to the site where you got your bootable iso's from. This will be useful in the future.

Seems the trick here is to run something that supports NTFS/FAT/FAT32 and network support and you might just get out of jail. The most important thing though is to protect the integrity of the unreadable drive to ensure you don't accidentally overwriite some sectors and make the problem worse. I voted with my feet here and physically disabled the drive (pulled the d power socket out) until I was ready to look at it.

So there you have it. Sincere thanks to all of you for your inputs but what a waste of valuable time. Instead of taking a mere 2 hours to reformat and reinstall my system drive (which is what I set out to do in the first place) I get to spend 2 days alone on sorting a buggered drive that should not have been buggered in the first place except it would appear XP is a little flaky in this area! Now that's crap. Will Vista offer an improvement in this area? Somehow I doubt it (hey, I'm not bitter).

Could a moderator make this into a sticky thread please? There is some valuable and pretty useful info in here that could help out a whole host of poor, unfortunate souls in the future.

Once again, very many thanks.

WB

wacky.banana

Postscript:

Now all up and running, data recovered, just a few more apps to install. I picked up the link below from t'internet, ran it on my dynamic disk and the conversion worked like a dream. All drives are now basic disks.

The beauty of this solution is that you get to convert the disk WITHOUT losing your data or having to rebuild the drive from scratch. Neat.

Link, like this thread, might be useful to somebody.

Cheers

WB

Converting Dynamic Disks Back to Basic Disks - The Lazyadmin.com