Lost said:
I have just installed my machine using XP Home edition. I added
another HDD to the PC, the HDD was previously configured for a XP
Professional edition machine. But the disk did not show up in the
Windows Explorer.
The Device Manager did not indicate any error, but when I clicked
on the POPULATE button under the 'Volumes' tab, the result for
'Capacity' showed 0MB.
The Disk Management window displayed 'Disk 1' with an exclamation
mark next to it. Two other pieces of info found are 'Dynamic' and
'Foreign'. When I right-click on the item, it displayed an option
that says 'Convert to Basic Disk'.
I had some data on the disk, is there a way for me to recover the
disk without having to loose all my data? Please help, thank you.
Shenan said:
How was the drive configured in the Windows XP Professional
machine before you put it in as a slave drive in the Windows XP
Home system?
Could it have been converted to a dynamic drive?
Can you put the old drive back in its original place?
Thanks for your assistance. The 'old' HDD with XP Professional was
configured as a 'dynamic' disk, there is no OS in it. When I
transferred it to the XP Home system, it was configured as a Slave
disk.
I no longer have the XP Professional system with me already. The
HDD seems 'healthy' except that the OS couldn't recognise the data
format. Is there a way to recover the data without having to
reformat the HDD?
Unfortunately - not in your current setup as Dynamic Disks are not supported
in Windows XP Home Edition.
Visit here:
http://technet2.microsoft.com/Windo...0e0d-4afb-a42f-00c1154cb3791033.mspx?mfr=true
For more information.
-------------
Foreign
The Foreign status occurs when you move a dynamic disk to the local computer
from another computer running Windows 2000, Windows XP Professional, Windows
XP 64-bit Edition (Itanium), or the Windows Server 2003 family of operating
systems. Foreign status can also occur on computers running Windows XP Home
Edition that are configured to dual-boot with another operating system that
uses dynamic disks (such as Windows 2000 Professional or Windows XP
Professional). Dynamic disks are not supported on Windows XP Home Edition or
on portable computers. A warning icon appears on disks that display the
Foreign status.
To access data on the disk, you must add the disk to your computer's system
configuration. To add a disk to your computer's system configuration, import
the foreign disk (right-click the disk and then click Import Foreign Disks).
Any existing volumes on the foreign disk become visible and accessible when
you import the disk. For instructions describing how to move and import
disks, see Move disks to another computer.
However, you cannot access data on the disk if you are running Windows XP
Home Edition. To use the disk on Windows XP Home Edition, you must convert
it to a basic disk, which destroys all data on the disk.
Caution
..Do not convert a dynamic disk to a basic disk unless you are certain that
you no longer need the data on that disk. Converting a dynamic disk to a
basic disk destroys all data on the disk.
To convert the disk to an empty basic disk, see Change a dynamic disk back
to a basic disk.
In some cases, a disk that was previously connected to the system can
display the Foreign status. Configuration data for dynamic disks is stored
on all dynamic disks, so the information about which disks are owned by the
system is lost when all dynamic disks fail.
For instructions describing how to fix disks with Foreign status, see
Troubleshooting Disk Management.
