Problem with hard drive

G

Guest

Hi

I have XP Pro with a 1.3 Gig P4 CPU and 768 meg RAM.

I have installed a new second hard drive, which had data from my old
second hard drive written to it on another PC.

The hard drive is seen in the BIOS and in Hardware Devices, where is is said
to be working properly, but it is not in explorer.

I looked in My Computer/Manage/Disk Management and the disk is there but
is shown as Dynamic Foreign. I'm not sure what that means or how to make the
Hard Drive appear in Explorer.

Any advice on what to do would be appreciated, I do not care if I lose the
data on the disk.

thanks
 
R

Rich Barry

Daniel, if the other PC is available reinstall the second hard drive and
format it from there.
 
G

Guest

Rich

I'm not sure I understand, the drive was formatted on the other PC, that was
beforeI got the data onto it, putting it into my PC is where the problem
lies, in any case the other PC is now in pieces.

Any other ideas?

regards
 
A

Anna



Rich Barry said:
Daniel, if the other PC is available reinstall the second hard drive and
format it from there.


Daniel:
Presumably you're running the Home Ed. of the XP OS. As such, this version
cannot access data on a dynamic (foreign) disk. Most likely that drive was
mistakenly originally created as a "dynamic" disk - instead of a "basic"
disk in a previous OS. While there are situations where a HDD should be
created as a "dynamic" disk, it's a relatively rare situation for most users
where this is necessary.

In any event, the Home Ed. of XP cannot access data on a dynamic disk. It
"sees" the disk as "foreign". You can convert the disk to a "Basic" disk in
your present system; there is no need to install the HDD in another machine.

In Disk Management, simply right-click on the drive (the area where the disk
is shown as "Dynamic") and select the "Convert to Basic Disk" from the
sub-menu that opens. Understand that when you do this, all data on the disk
will be lost - the data will be destroyed. However, since you've indicated
that it's of no import to you if the data is lost, then you can go ahead
with this process.

The disk will then be reflected as "Unallocated" and you can then go ahead
with partitioning/formatting it in Disk Management.
Anna
 
G

Guest

Anna said:
Daniel:
Presumably you're running the Home Ed. of the XP OS. As such, this version
cannot access data on a dynamic (foreign) disk. Most likely that drive was
mistakenly originally created as a "dynamic" disk - instead of a "basic"
disk in a previous OS. While there are situations where a HDD should be
created as a "dynamic" disk, it's a relatively rare situation for most users
where this is necessary.

In any event, the Home Ed. of XP cannot access data on a dynamic disk. It
"sees" the disk as "foreign". You can convert the disk to a "Basic" disk in
your present system; there is no need to install the HDD in another machine.

In Disk Management, simply right-click on the drive (the area where the disk
is shown as "Dynamic") and select the "Convert to Basic Disk" from the
sub-menu that opens. Understand that when you do this, all data on the disk
will be lost - the data will be destroyed. However, since you've indicated
that it's of no import to you if the data is lost, then you can go ahead
with this process.

The disk will then be reflected as "Unallocated" and you can then go ahead
with partitioning/formatting it in Disk Management.
Anna

Anna

I have XP Pro.

cheers
 
R

Rich Barry

Daniel, is that the case that you had the drive configured as Dynamic
instead of Basic? If yes, follow the good advice that
Anna gave you. You can do it from XP Pro as well.
 
G

Guest

Will do,

thanks for your help

regards

Rich Barry said:
Daniel, is that the case that you had the drive configured as Dynamic
instead of Basic? If yes, follow the good advice that
Anna gave you. You can do it from XP Pro as well.
 

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