Trouble with a Spanned Volume

[Guest]

I created a spanned volume in the Vista release version 5744 using three of
the new 750GB Seagate drives. When my 30 days was up I decided to install
the RTM version of Vista only to find that my spanned volume is no longer
accessible. Disk management shows three offline Dynamic disks. When right
clicking on any of the disks only 2 options are available; "Convert to Basic
Disk" or "Reactivate Disk".

The "Reactivate Disk" option results in the following error; "The attempted
operation is invalid. Either the parameters specified are invalid or the
operation cannot be completed on the selected object"

When selecting "Convert to Basic Disk" I am warned that I will loose data.

I downloaded an evaluation version of Power Data Recovery just to see if my
data was okay and to my surprise instead of displaying the three separate
drives it showed the spanned volume as healthy and intact.

So the question is, how do I get windows to recognize its own spanned volume?

If for some silly reason this is not possible, than will I actually loose
all my data by going the "Convert To Basic Disk" route? or will I only loose
the data that had been split across multiple disks?

I would be highly appreciative of any input I could get on this issue.

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi Ryan,

First, you should be aware that it was a beta product, and as such you
should not have relied on it or anything it did to work properly. Data
should never have been placed here if it was not backed up. This is why it
is repeatedly stated to not use this on a primary system.

The normal way to resolve this issue is to use the 'import foreign disk'
function of disk manager if you cannot reactive them. From what you've
stated, it doesn't appear to be an option. That's not good. Outside of a
third party product, you aren't going to be able to recover it using disk
manager if you cannot reactive the spanned volume. The tool is limited in
functionality.

Converting from dynamic back to basic involves deleting the volumes on each
of the spanned drive, so yes you would lose any data on them. You may be
able to recover it later with freely available undelete utilities, but I
wouldn't rely on that for 100% recovery of data either.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[zaxon]

what is a spanned volume!!?!?!
what!!...i just dont know...



Zax

 

[John Barnes]

Google it. Time to learn how to do simple research.

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi,

It's quite simple really. Basically the volume is composed of more than one
physical drive. Using a software solution, one large volume is created that
"spans" across multiple drives instead of multiple drives with a minimum of
one partition/volume on each.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[zaxon]

thanks rick...
Get a life John...

Hi,

It's quite simple really. Basically the volume is composed of more than
one physical drive. Using a software solution, one large volume is created
that "spans" across multiple drives instead of multiple drives with a
minimum of one partition/volume on each.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org