Post-installation problems with Vista - data recovery from hard disk Installing and Upgrading Vista Discuss Post-installation problems with Vista - data recovery from hard disk in the Windows Vista forums; i recently installed Vista on a Pentium4 system that was runnig xP for quite a while. here is the problem and how it happened. the system has two IDE disk ...

[mashi]

i recently installed Vista on a Pentium4 system that was runnig xP for quite a while. here is the problem and how it happened.

the system has two IDE disk drives, both on the same channel, one as primary and the other as secondary. before installing Vista, i made sure that any data i needed from the boot drive was backed up and copied to the second drive. i did a clean install of Vista on the boot drive, but what happened was that Vista made the secondary drive also as dynamic partitioned. now i need to recover the data from the secondary drive. when i examine the drive contents, the change i see is that the file system now shows up as dynamic partitioning.

any help, suggestions or pointers on how to reset the disk partitioning to make it readable, and thus recover data will be most appreicated.

thanks.

[felix8406]

Try this, just copy and paste to the address bar. It should do the trick. ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/englis...s/PTEDIT32.zip

[Snuffy]

I had the same problem... hopefully felixs post will work, I finally had to
make clean partition, install XP - install PQ 8. change the partition on D:\
and C:\ to basic using XP..
boot to disk. FORMAT drive with XP. reset boot drive for Vista.

Today it seems now Paragon 8.5 can do it all and Vista compatible.
PROFESSIONAL AND SERVER EDITIONS ONLY:
<|>
Supports dynamic disks
Convert Dynamic Disks to Basic Disks
Windows XP Professional x64 Edition support
Windows NT/2000/2003 Server support (Server Editions only)/Vista Family (32-bit)

[felix8406]

You can convert the drive to basic using Vista, however, all data on the drive will be lost, that's why I recommended PTEDIT.

I tried once placing the drive in an enclosure and connecting it externally through the USB port, but still didn't work.

[Snuffy]

That’s how I found TestDisk. http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

I ran TestDisk on a XP Pro laptop, it detected my USB-connected “foreign” drive, found all my “partitions” (dynamic disk volumes), allowed me to backup my data to the laptop, and offered the option to write a new partition table based on what it had found. I did just that, securely removed the USB enclosure, plugged it back and voila! My laptop detected a new basic disk, with partitions instead of volumes, drive letters, and best of all, all my data intact.
I was then able to reinstall the drive in my computer, repair Windows and from there run TestDisk on the three remaining drives so I can confirm that it works for external (USB) drives, IDE drives and SATA drives.

Conclusion:

TestDisk 6.6 will allow to backup your data and, if you let it rewrite the partition stucture, it will convert your dynamic disk to a basic disk without touching the data. The say it works in Vista.
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http://thelazyadmin.com/blogs/thelaz...sic-Disks.aspx
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HOWTO: Convert a dynamic disk back to a basic disk without data loss

**Disclaimer: This ONLY works if you have NOT used ANY of the "new" features of dynamic disks such as extending a partition or software RAID. This is an expert-level procedure, so if you don't know what you are doing, you shouldn't be attempting this.**

1) Install dskprobe.exe on the system. (This is one of the utilities in the Win2K or WinXP support tools on the install CD, and can be installed by simply copying the .exe file to the hard drive.)
2) Run dskprobe.exe on the system.
3) Select the Drives menu and "Physical Drive. . ."
4) Double click on the drive that you want to convert back to a basic disk. Click the "Set Active" button next to that drive.
5) From the Sectors menu, select "Read"
6) Accept the defaults (begin sector 0, read 1 sector) and click "Read"
7) In the editor, go to the "01C0" line and the third bit should be a "42".Change that to a "07".
8 ) From the Sectors menu, select "Write". Confirm all dialog boxes. **Note: This is the step that will hose your box if you have not followed the above instructions correctly.**
9) Exit dskprobe.exe. Reboot
10) Run chkdsk on the affected logical drive(s). If any errors are found, do a chkdsk /f to fix them. Done
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