Lost HDD in upgrade!?

[Julian Milano]

I had to re-install my OS, so I bought a new WD 250 GB HDD, installed it
into my WinXP SP2 PC and copied all my valuable data to it. I then
disconnected the drive from my system, re-installed WinXP onto the existing
drive (2x 80GB WD running as RAID 1 on the mobo's RAID controller) which
went smoothly.

I then shutdown, connected the backup HDD's cables and turned on my PC. To
my shock and horror, the drive does not come up in Explorer. I ran Disk
Management from the Computer Management console and the disk comes up as
Disk0, Unreadable, Dynamic disk.

What's happened to all my backed up data?

WinXP (No SPs- yet)
Asus P4P800E with mobo drivers installed

 

[Richard Urban]

Go to start | help

Type in dynamic disk

Look in second group for "reactivate a missing or off-line dynamic disk"

--
Regards,

Richard Urban

If you knew as much as you thought you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi,

Some tools to readd the disk can be found here:

testdisk www.cgsecurity.org
mbrwork www.terabyteunlimited.com

The second is more powerful, but many users unfamiliar with working with
drives find the first one easier to use.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[NoStop]

From his spyware and virus infected Windoze box, Julian Milano had this to
say:

I had to re-install my OS, so I bought a new WD 250 GB HDD, installed it
into my WinXP SP2 PC and copied all my valuable data to it. I then
disconnected the drive from my system, re-installed WinXP onto the
existing drive (2x 80GB WD running as RAID 1 on the mobo's RAID
controller) which went smoothly.

I then shutdown, connected the backup HDD's cables and turned on my PC. To
my shock and horror, the drive does not come up in Explorer. I ran Disk
Management from the Computer Management console and the disk comes up as
Disk0, Unreadable, Dynamic disk.

What's happened to all my backed up data?

WinXP (No SPs- yet)
Asus P4P800E with mobo drivers installed

Someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that one needs XP with at
least SP1 installed for Windoze to see a hard drive larger than 137GB. Of
course when you installed the hd under XP SP2, it had no problems with that
large drive. Then you installed the OS on it, but XP without any SPs. So
that's when XP had a problem with this large hard drive. I don't know the
correct way to deal with this kind of scenario, but possibly it'll require
you to install XP that has been slipstreamed to SP2 first.

 

[NoStop]

From his spyware and virus infected Windoze box, Julian Milano had this to
say:

I had to re-install my OS, so I bought a new WD 250 GB HDD, installed it
into my WinXP SP2 PC and copied all my valuable data to it. I then
disconnected the drive from my system, re-installed WinXP onto the
existing drive (2x 80GB WD running as RAID 1 on the mobo's RAID
controller) which went smoothly.

I then shutdown, connected the backup HDD's cables and turned on my PC. To
my shock and horror, the drive does not come up in Explorer. I ran Disk
Management from the Computer Management console and the disk comes up as
Disk0, Unreadable, Dynamic disk.

What's happened to all my backed up data?

WinXP (No SPs- yet)
Asus P4P800E with mobo drivers installed

Like to try and correct my last post. I re-read what you said you did and
realize now that you installed XP to your RAID drive. Hopefully just
getting your system patched to SP1 or SP2 will fix your problem in regards
to this large hard drive.

 

[Thief_]

Thanks guys, particularly NoStop.

When I added the new HDD, I had XPSP2. When I reloaded WinXPNoSP, the drive
was "unreadable". I followed your instructions and installed SP2 (with the
250GB disconnected) and then reconnected the 250GB after rebooting. The
250GB then came up as a Foreign disk, which I imported and I now have all my
valuable data back. I wasn't aware that XPNoSP had a 137GB limit!

I just feel relieved that my data's back. You can image my panic when it
happened. At least now I know what to expect.

 

[Pete]

No !

Go to start | help

Type in dynamic disk

Look in second group for "reactivate a missing or off-line dynamic disk"

--
Regards,

Richard Urban

If you knew as much as you thought you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!