Vista Tutorial - 2nd HD (IDE) not detected by disk management

hello I need some help with a hard drive I just put into my system is this is the wrong part of the forum please let me know

I recently installed Vista with on this machine with this new HD deatched though it had previously been used in this computer running xp.

It is a IDE hard drive and although device manager recognizes it as a disk drive I cannot get windows explorer or disk management to notice it. It has a ntfs format.

Thanks please let me know any additional info I should post. my other drive is SATA drive

Hi Usurperr, and welcome to Vista Forums.

It sounds like you may not have you BIOS setup properly for the drive. Consult with your motherboard manual for this to help you also. You will need to check in BIOS to make sure that the port you plugged the new IDE hard drive into on the motherboard is set for IDE in the BIOS (CMOS or Integrated Peripherals) settings and not for SATA or RAID.

Also, double check you IDE ribbon cable and power connections to make that they are secure and fully connected.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Also check if it is set to master or slave. You can have 2 drives connected to 1 port. 1 master and 1 slave. It is set by jumpers near the ribbon cable.

Hi thanks for the reply so far but I have misread my disk management it turns out the drive was there all along unfortunately it is showing as a dynamic disk. This was my storage drive before I upgraded to vista and has all my data on it which I dont want to lose. I did a quick google search on converting back to basic and things dont look good. Can anyone help me with my options Is there a safe way to convert back to basic or can anyone suggest a better option.

thanks again

Hi,

A Dynamic disk is only accessible from the o/s instance that converted it to Dynamic.

I presume you had XP Pro before.

You will need to reinstall your XP Pro on a new simple volume on your basic disk - (using Window's disk management to convert your Dynamic disk back to Basic will cause you to lose all the data on it ). Do check you can access your Dynamic disk from XP after the reinstall.

Then try this :

http://thelazyadmin.com/blogs/thelazyadmin/archive/2007/01/17/Converting-Dynamic-Disks-Back-to-Basic-Disks.aspx


To convert Dynamic to Basic without losing all your data you could also use Avanquest Partition Commander Pro.

www.v-com.com/product/Partition_Commander_home.html

( Avanquest program is about $40 ).Check out the the link first for any instructions before shelling out for it.

If you decide this is the way to go you can get a downloadable version for $15 here http://www.softwarebizreseller.com/i...c&progid=10130



SIW2

this is the best thread i could find about my problem
my desktop comp.(OS XP Pro) crashed and now i need to access my external drive and im trying to do it through my laptop (OS Vista Home Basic)

disk management does detect it, but it can not import foriegn disk or even reactivate disk.
it seems that vista home can not do this from what i read so far.
but i do not want to lose any data on this external drive.

its a dynamic disk not a basic disk

any hints to help

thanks

Hi vista noob,

The normal way to convert is destructive , i.e. you lose the data, like this

ITsVISTA Tip 32: Convert a Dynamic Disk to a Basic Disk in Vista | ITsVISTA

There is a workaround using diskprobe, but the following method looks more straightforward - haven't used it myself , but looks like it should do the the job - hopefully without losing your data

Convert Dynamic Disk back to Basic Disk without data loss - Wilders Security Forums

Hope it works for you.

SIW2

thanks SIW2

i will give it a try