2nd Internal Not working

[Guest]

I have just installed Vista Home Premium and my second internal HD won't
work. The HD worked in the previous installation of XP Pro and from a Live CD
version of Linux.

According to the Computer Manager, the drive needs to be formatted before it
can be used. I dont want to format it becuase it has all my mp3s and photos
on.

Any suggestions

 

[Richard Urban]

Copy the files to another location and then repair the drive.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban MVP
Microsoft Windows Shell/User

 

[Guest]

Thanks for that. Unfortunately, its not really possible. My windows HD is
only 20gb and my storage HD is 80gb and is almost full.

I have just checked this and according to Windows Computer Management > Disk
Managment, my other Hard Drive is a Dynamic disk. I have never heard of that
before.

Can anyone help?

 

[Richard Urban]

A basic disk is the default mode. A dynamic disk is created by choice or by
accident. If you try to convert a dynamic disk to a basic disk you will
loose everything - guaranteed. It is likely "because" the disk is a dynamic
disk that you cant see under the new operating system.

You only hope, at this point, is to do what I first said. You MUST copy the
information to another drive, even if you have to beg, borrow or steal it.
You would do this while having the hard drive connected to a computer that
is using the same operating system as was used when the files were saved to
the drive.

Then you would put the drive back in your present computer and delete all
partitions that are currently present. You would then create a new partition
and format the same as NTFS. You want the drive to end up as a basic disk
once again.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban MVP
Microsoft Windows Shell/User

 

[Guest]

Thank you very much for your advice. Seems a bit silly that Vista Premium
wont recognise a drive which was running on an XP Pro O/S just a few days ago
and can be read in Linux.

What I will do then is boot up in linux, copy over as much to my windows
drive as I can, reboot in windows and then burn the stuff to DVD. This will
be fun!

Thanks for you help.

Joe

 

[David Vair]

Did you do a clean install of Vista and was the drive in the machine at the time? It may be an
ownership issue on the drive itself. Do a google for taking ownership of files and folders and see
if that helps.

 

[Ashton Crusher]

Thank you very much for your advice. Seems a bit silly that Vista Premium
wont recognise a drive which was running on an XP Pro O/S just a few days ago
and can be read in Linux.

What I will do then is boot up in linux, copy over as much to my windows
drive as I can, reboot in windows and then burn the stuff to DVD. This will
be fun!

Thanks for you help.

Joe

I had the same problem. I agree it seems a little silly but at some
point, and this is just my assumption as to what's happening, the OS
has to move forward with a more robust formatting less likely to lose
data. So if Vista allowed that disk to be usable it might also defeat
some newer design element of Vista. This is pure speculation on my
part. Maybe it's just a stupid oversight. I had to do what the other
poster suggested and find an external drive whose format was
acceptable to both my old XP machine and my new Vista machine so I
could back up and then transfer my files. Sounds like you are using
the same machine so your back up will become your transfer.

 

[Don]

Thank you very much for your advice. Seems a bit silly that Vista Premium
wont recognise a drive which was running on an XP Pro O/S just a few days ago
and can be read in Linux.

What I will do then is boot up in linux, copy over as much to my windows
drive as I can, reboot in windows and then burn the stuff to DVD. This will
be fun!

Important! I'll bet my lunch money that the linux kernel does not yet
speak Vista's new flavor of NTFS. Do *not* attempt to write to a Vista
NTFS partition from linux or you will wind up in a similar mess.

Don't be in a hurry -- be cautious and do your experimenting on test
partitions you create for the purpose. Your files will still be there
later as long as you don't screw up because you're rushing.

 

[Guest]

I had XP Pro running previously. It was installed on a 20gb internal hd. I
stored everything else on my internal 80gb hd.

I rather stupidly tried to install Knoppix Linux to an external USB HD but
accidentally wrote over the master boot record so XP stopped working. I
decided that I would get Vista.

I bought a copy of the upgrade which meant that I had to reinstall XP and
then install Vista but I did set it to do a clean install.

The 80gb drive was connected at all times and is the primary drive on the
second IDE bus. The only thing I can think of is that when I installed my 2nd
drive, for some reason I selected dynamic drive when I formatted it. God
knows why I would have done that.

Luckily, however, I have a DVD burner and I have been able to access and
burn to DVD all the files from the 2nd drive using a Live CD of Knoppix. It
just takes a long time to burn 78gb to DVD at 4x.

Thanks everyone for your help.

Joe