I got the external case and gave it a shot. Of course it would not work.
Win XP recognized the the USB port, it recognized the type of drive and I do
not see it in Explorer. I can see it in Disk Mgr but not a drive that can be
obtained. I only have the choice to Delete the partition.
I needed to get the one computer running, so I deleted the partition and
started over and I will keep it as an external drive.
I tried the diskpart and list vol and it did not show the drive. BIOS showed
the drive and the correct size.
I still would like WD non-Support to finish my question I posed to them on
their Support web site to tell me why my two identical drives failed to be
recognized after re-installing Win XP and installing Vista on an XP machine.
These 2 drives had been working for several months prior to these installs so
I do not know why this caused the problems they have caused.
I still have the Vista machine to do, plan on doing the external drive to it
as well but will wait to see if WD support answers my question.
"mister.jones" wrote:
> 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?
> >> >
>