Very strange, indeed.
I am not sure if you would see the data on the drive if you put it in an
external case. I have the impression, the volume is not in a format that
Vista can recognize.
You can look at more details with the cmd program 'diskpart'.
The following commands might be useful:
list vol - lists all volumes
sel vol x - selects the volume you are interested in
detail part - shows details about the partition of the selected volume
What partition type is given? 42 should be correct for dynamic disks.
detail vol - shows details for selected volume
Is your volume perhaps 'hidden'?
You can compare the working and the non-working disks, perhaps you notice a
difference.
online - might bring the volume online?
setid - could perhaps be used to set the id from 42 (dynamic) to 07 (basic),
function is probably blocked.
.... some minutes later ...
Several reports that _maybe_ Vista Home does not support dynamic disks,
although documentation states that all versions of Vista support dynamic
disks:
http://itsvista.com/2007/02/dynamic-...bastard-child/ http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1030654823
In this case, there is one solution, which lets you _probably_ keep all your
data, but with no guarantees.
And you have to use a disk editor for this purpose.
The procedure is explained here (dskprobe.exe, however, poses problems under
Vista):
http://faq.arstechnica.com/link.php?i=1806
I successfully applied it to one dynamic disk, all data was save.
Mainly you have to use a disk editor, go to sector 0, go to byte 01C2. This
byte will be 42 (dynamic disk). Change it to 07 (basic disk, NTFS). For the
second partition, the byte is 01D2, third 01E2, forth 01F2.
You can find disk editors in most partioning programs, or as freeware (e.g.
Tiny Hexer)
The procedure is simple, and it should work if your disks do not use fancy
features of dynamic disks (spanning/mirroring), which they probably won't.
But, of course, this is on your own risk, and you might loose the data on
the disk.
Let us know if it worked. Good luck!
"ddwebb" <ddwebb@discussions.microsoft.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:EB10CDF4-5C86-4319-9E03-F2BEB4989017@microsoft.com...
> Hea, I was wondering if I could take the 320g drive that has failed in
> this
> computer, put it in a external case as a USB external drive and connect it
> to
> the computer. Wonder if it would recognize the drive as an external drive
> and
> drive letter and then read what is on the drive?
> Then the next question is:
> If I did this, would I have the same problem I have now where if I need to
> reinstall the O/S, it would not loose the drive as it would be a USB
> drive.
> Correct in your thinking as well?
>
> "ddwebb" wrote:
>
>> It says it is a Dynamic drive and Healthy but no drive letter.
>>
>> I dont get the ability to assign a drive letter, not enabled. I an only
>> see
>> Properties and Help and Convert to Basic Disk.
>>
>> Would have made it nice to just assign a new drive letter.
>>
>> Get this, I have another PC with the same type of drive in in it and had
>> to
>> re-install XP on the PC. The 2nd drive was the Western Digital wd3200jb
>> just
>> like this one on my Vista machine. It also did not come up after
>> reinstalling
>> the O/S?
>>
>> So now 2 machines with identical type of drives and both would not show
>> the
>> drive after the O/S was installed. Both show the same issue, I can see in
>> Disk Mgr but can not do anything with them except Convert to Basic.
>>
>> "mister.jones" wrote:
>>
>> > You say, the drive shows up in Disk Manager.
>> >
>> > On the left, you see probably:
>> > Disk X
>> > Dynamic
>> > XXX GB
>> > Online
>> >
>> > What do you see on the right? Which color is assigned to the volume?
>> > Which
>> > filesystem is given? etc.
>> > What comes up if you right-click here?
>> > Have you tried "Change Drive Letter and Paths" to add a new drive
>> > letter?
>> >