Can't see partition in Dynamic disk

Discussion in 'Storage Devices' started by Sundeep, Apr 27, 2007.

  1. Sundeep

    Sundeep Geek Trainee

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    Hi,
    I have two internal hard disks installed of which, one (80GB) contains the OS, and the other (160GB) I use to store all my critical data. Couple of days back I had to format my first hard disk as Windows had become corrupt. After formatting I installed Windows XP again and all worked fine. But when i opened Windows Explorer i could not see my other hard disk (160 GB) which was a Dynamic disk. I did some research and found that this problem could occur when XP was reinstalled and I applied the following solution,

    1) Install dskprobe.exe on the system.
    2) Run dskprobe.exe on the system.
    3) Select the Drives menu and "Physical Drive. . ."
    4) Double click on the drive that you want to convert back to a basic disk. Click the "Set Active" button next to that drive.
    5) From the Sectors menu, select "Read"
    6) Accept the defaults (begin sector 0, read 1 sector) and click "Read"
    7) In the editor, go to the "01C0" line and the third bit should be a "42". Change that to a "07".
    8) From the Sectors menu, select "Write". Confirm all dialog boxes.
    9) Exit dskprobe.exe. Reboot. The disk should now appear.

    This too worked fine but my problem got only half solved. The dynamic disk had two partitions. After applying the above solution, only the first partition is visible. I cannot see the other partition which actually is a much larger one and contains lot of critical data. Can anyone please help?
     
  2. megamaced

    megamaced Geek Geek Geek!

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    I am not familiar with the diskprobe application, however I got a bit worried when you said "Double click on the drive that you want to convert back to a basic disk". It's not possible to convert a dynamic disk back to a basic disk without erasing all the data.

    Can you post a screenshot of your Disk Management Console?

    PS, why are you using Dynamic Disks anyway? Are you thinking about adding RAID or disk spanning in the future?
     
  3. Sundeep

    Sundeep Geek Trainee

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    I don't need the disk to be dynamic at all. Actually i've purchased this computer from my friend who had used it for hardly some time and i got it in the form of a dynamic disk. I am posting a screenshot of my Disk Mgmt. Console.
     

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  4. megamaced

    megamaced Geek Geek Geek!

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    Well for starters, those are not Dynamic Disks! :rolleyes:

    Now with that in mind, please can you rephrase your question? Where is the missing Partition? What should I be looking out for?
     
  5. Sundeep

    Sundeep Geek Trainee

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    Well of course it is no more a dynamic cisk :cool: . As I had already explained in my first quote, i converted the disk to basic, from dynamic, by following the procedure (see my first quote). And the screenshot that i have posted is of the latest state of my hard disk. I am attaching another screenshot of the hard disk properties as seen from the Explorer, which shows (surprisingly) that its capacity is only 50 GB. I hope maybe you can now understand that there is another 100 GB somewhere :)
     

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  6. donkey42

    donkey42 plank

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    strange, mega he means his 2nd HDD is showing a 50Gb partition but the HDD has 149.05Gb of free space on the drive but the entire HDD is taken up by the 50Gb partition

    BTW: i can only think of deleting the 50Gb partition and reboot & hopefully the full 149.05Gb will be usable[ot]if you do delete the partition make sure you backup any important data[/ot]

    [​IMG]
     
  7. Sundeep

    Sundeep Geek Trainee

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    Thanks for the suggestion, I could do that but the 100GB contains 80GB of data and I don't think i'll forgive myself for the next 20 years if I can't recover that after deleting the 50GB partition. As you can see, I'm in a fix now :)
     
  8. megamaced

    megamaced Geek Geek Geek!

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    I wonder if you cut your partition short when you issued:

    As I've said, I am not familiar with Dskprobe, but I would assume that you could continue using that program to rescue the data in the remainder of the missing partition?

    When I get home I shall play around with dskprobe so I can get a better understanding of what might have gone wrong, and how it can be troubleshooted.

    EDIT: BTW, where did you get those instructions from?
     
  9. megamaced

    megamaced Geek Geek Geek!

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    What data do you have in the 50GB partition? What I don't understand here is that you've converted a Dynamic Disk, back to a Basic Disk, and still have your data? That's impossible! All data is lost when you convert back to a basic disk.
     
  10. donkey42

    donkey42 plank

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    very :confused: do you mean the 50Gb partition actually contains 80Gb of data[ot]could you please explain[/ot]
     
  11. Sundeep

    Sundeep Geek Trainee

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    Thanks. And i got those instructions from here,

    HOWTO: Convert a dynamic disk back to a basic disk without data loss

    Also came across the following which mentioned the same procedure,

    The Lazy Admin : Converting Dynamic Disks Back to Basic Disks
     
  12. Sundeep

    Sundeep Geek Trainee

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    That is very much possible and I have experienced the same. All my data is there exactly as it was before, and i can very much access it.
     
  13. Sundeep

    Sundeep Geek Trainee

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    Originally Posted by Sundeep
    Thanks for the suggestion, I could do that but the 100GB contains 80GB of data and I don't think i'll forgive myself for the next 20 years if I can't recover that after deleting the 50GB partition. As you can see, I'm in a fix now

    Please read my quote again. I am not sure if you still understand the scenario. I'll explain it again, I have a 160GB hard disk which originally had two partitions (50GB + 100GB). Don't know about the remaining 10GB. So then i converted the disk to basic as it was unreadable. I can now access the 50GB partition but the rest 100GB partition is still not visible as seen in the screenshots that i have attached.
     
  14. donkey42

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    well HDD's are sold as unformatted while formatting you actually loose some space (and the space is also used for error checking)[ot]your problem is beyond me, like i already said, backup the data and delete the partition, is about all i can suggest, as the 50Gb partition appear to be using 149.05Gb, which as far as i'm aware is impossible, very strange[/ot]
     
  15. Sundeep

    Sundeep Geek Trainee

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    Thanks for your time. I will persist with finding some solution. About this 50GB/149GB stuff, even I'm finding it as one of the most weirdest thing that I've seen in my 15 years of co-existence with computers. But it remains true. Thanks again :)
     
  16. donkey42

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    being thinking, right, although i'd never heard of Dynamic Disks before seeing this thread, what data is on the 50Gb partition ?, as deleting the 50Gb partition may restore the 100Gb partition because the 50Gb partition appears to be using the full 149.05Gb of space (including the space where the 100Gb partition was)[ot]do NOT do this unless it makes sense to you or someone else suggests it[/ot]
     
  17. megamaced

    megamaced Geek Geek Geek!

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    I think i've found the answer. The clue is in both of those guides you've provided.

    And:

    With that in mind, I'd assume you'd have to repeat the process. But this time, you would use a different line. Which line you will edit is confusing me though.
    If you look at what makes up those lines, "01C0" might represent the C:\ drive, or simply the first partition on the disk. Likewise, "01D0" might represent the D:\ drive, or the second partition on the disk. I don't know whether it matters or not.

    I am torn whether to recommend you change the "01D0" line from number 42 to 7, or whether you change the "01x0" line, where "x" represents the original drive letter of the missing partition.

    Thinking back though, you changed the "01C0" line for a partition represented by the J:\ drive. So logically, I'd guess you'd have to change the "01D0" line to rescue the next partition.

    Just like to say right here and now that I am in NO way responsible for any data loss that you may or may not suffer. :p
     
  18. megamaced

    megamaced Geek Geek Geek!

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    Hard drives and partitions start of as a 'Basic Disk'. The reason they are called basic disks is because you are only able to do limited things with them. Such as create an primary or extended partition, and add logical drives.

    You create a dynamic disk by converting a Basic disk using the Disk Management tool. Once you've converted the disk, you can do lots of new things with it. Such as spanning a 'partition' (or volume as they are called when refering to Dynamic Disks) over several different hard drives.
    For example, my D:\ might contain free space on several hard drives.

    You can also set up software RAID on Dynamic Disks. Such as RAID0 striping, RAID1 disk mirroring and RAID 5 striping with parity
     
  19. donkey42

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    being reading this to study Dynamic Disks[ot]there so much i don't know, nearly enough to stop me posting, because there's so much that i don't know, but luckily most people don't know either[/ot]BTW:when i get my LAN up & running, i'll try backporting
     
  20. Sundeep

    Sundeep Geek Trainee

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    My problems don't seem to find any ray of light i guess. Check out the screenshot of the hard disk's MBR attached here. I changed the value on line 01C0 from 42 to 07 but line 01D0 has all "0" values :( There is no "42" to change here.
     

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