Similar / same problem - would love a solution...
Here's my situation background: I was getting BSODs way too often o
my home-built PC, and I ended up determining that the problem was my
year old mobo with the cracked and discolored capacitors. So
upgraded my mobo from a Socket A/AMD 760 EPoX board to a Socke
754/nForce3 Giga-Byte board. In the process, I also had to replace m
1GHz Athlon proc with a 3000+ Athlon64 and I put in 512MB of brand ne
PC3200 RAM from Crucial. Everything else in the case stayed the same
("Everything else in the case" = 128MB AGP card, 100MB Zip-Master o
IDE0, CD-RW-Slave on IDE0, boot drive-120GB EIDE WD1200JB-Master o
IDE1, and my data drive-120GB EIDE WD1200JB-Slave on IDE1)
What Happened Next (details of how my problem arose): After connectin
all the old components to the new mobo and powering up, I would get
very brief BSOD (I could never read the actual error) and then th
machine would re-boot. I researched the problem and determined that
would have to re-install my WinXP Pro OS on my boot drive (C:\ driv
containing only OS and installed apps, approx 90% free space). Due t
an unexplained inability to boot from my XP CD (and a failed attempt t
use a set of 6 XP boot diskettes I downloaded), I was unable to do th
recommended Repair/in-place install of XP. So, figuring that I didn'
have any real data on my boot drive, I proceeded to re-install WinX
Pro the only way I knew how: I booted from my old Win2000 install CD
installed Win2000 and then ran the WinXP Pro CD from within Win2000 t
perform the upgrade. <bummer> I thought I would re-install XP and b
prompted to re-activate, but I could handle that. At least my dat
would be safe... As a precautionary measure to make sure I wouldn'
lose my data, before I began the Win2000 install I disconnected my dat
drive from its IDE and power cables - just to keep this drive out of th
picture entirely until I had my OS re-installed and working. I don'
know if this matters or not, but when I did the Win2000 install on m
C:\ drive, I formatted it (NTFS) and created a 70GB partition (leavin
the rest of the 120GB drive as unpartitioned space). At any rate, th
Win2000 install went fine and the subsequent WinXP install/upgrade wen
fine, too. I installed all of my mobo chipset drivers (LAN, sound chip
etc.) and was ready to connect my data drive.
Here's where things went South: After I connected my data driv
(containing approx. 70GB of treasured data) XP did not display thi
drive in My Computer. I went into the Disk Manager utility to see i
the drive showed up at all, and it was there, but it was labeled a
"Dynamic, Unreadable". WTF!?!
What I've tried/thought of so far: I have done several hours o
research and troubleshooting and have come up with a bunch of possibl
solutions to this problem. I have tried connecting the drive to
different PC (running Win2000) and it still shows up in Disk Manager a
"Dynamic, Unreadable"... so I am left to assume that I am dealing with
corrupt MBR (see
http://tinyurl.com/6k5f8 ). I have run dmdiag /v an
verified that my data drive has a 0x42 system-id byte. I hav
considered using Diskprobe to manually change this byte in the MB
according to the MS KnowledgeBase instructions. I have thought abou
just using a boot disk and typing in a FDISK /MBR to reset my MBR (wha
will this do to my data?). I have even considered downloading and usin
either MBRtool or DiskPatch 2.0 from
http://www.diydatarecovery.nl
(DiskPatch costs about $50).
Here's where I need help: Given that (1) I have not seen/fixed thi
problem before, and (2) I DO NOT want to lose my data, I am hesitant t
"pull the trigger" and pursue a fix until I am convinced that it wil
have the desired results (ability to read my drive with no loss o
data). I am almost certain that there is nothing mechanically wron
with the drive and I don't think I have done anything (yet) that coul
have erased any of my precious data. It's just a matter of reading th
data, making a back-up of all of it, and then doing whatever I have t
do to get my OS to see the drive.
What's the best solution?
Regards,
Ian
Larry said:
Hi Anders,
I have the EXACT same problem. <snip>
LT
:
-
Hi,
I tried it, but it didn't work. It still shows up as
unreadable.
<snip>
:
-
I have two hard drives in my computer. The first disk
contains XP and the software, the second contains
personal stuff. The second disk is installed using--
NTFS--
dynamic disk.
Last weekedend I formated the XP disk, and installed--
XP--
again. After installing, the second disk comes up
as "unreadable" dynamic disk.
Is there a way to make it readable? I haven't done
anything to it, so all the data should be there.
Regards
Anders
-
.
-
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