Hard drive 'missing.'

[CaptainFillosan]

One of my hard drives is absent. It is connected to a IDE Controller as an extra device together with a CD-ROM, which is working OK.

The BIOS recognizes the controller, the CD-ROM and the Hard Drive but I cannot see the HDD when the machine starts up.

For further info, in Admin Tools > "Computer Management" it is reading as disc 3 'dynamic' while my two other drives read as 'basic.'

Your ideas please.

[Cornish Jack]

Been there, etc.! IIRC, I eventually sorted it using EITHER a Linux boot disk and moving the contents and then reformatting OR using Partition Magic 8 and doing similar. The lack of specificity is 'cos I can't remember which one did the trick. The Linux boot disk is a most useful bit of kit to have around when exposed to the vagaries of Windows - any version.:ok:

[Conan the Librarian]

You could try rebooting a few times until it shows up. Has happened to me a few times, though I just go for the easy approach as a rule. I must be getting old...

Conan

[CaptainFillosan]

I believe it is a bit more complicated than that - which I tried incidentally - and I understand that a 'dynamic' HD is not easily changed to a 'basic' because of a loss of data. On the the drive in question I have data that I cannot lose so I am looking for someone who has done it successfully please.

CF

[Two_dogs]

I seem to remember that having a HDD and a CD on the same controller can be problematic, even with a correct set up with the HDD as master and the CD Drive as slave.

Try connecting each of the drives to a seperate IDE channel. Go to the BIOS before rebooting and allow the drive to be found automatically. If you only have one IDE controller (not likely), try unplugging the CD drive ribbon and power cables, and boot with only the HDD present.

Two Dogs

[Saab Dastard]

I seem to remember that having a HDD and a CD on the same controller can be problematic, even with a correct set up with the HDD as master and the CD Drive as slave.


Tosh.

CaptainFillosan, what is the "status" of the "dynamic" disk, and its "volumes"?

Was there a reason for the dynamic conversion to have taken place - like installing another OS or application or re-partitioning the disk? Or even a deliberate conversion?

It could be a corruption in the MBR - I suggest you have look at the Help in the Disk Management console.

SD

[CaptainFillosan]

The status of the disk is that it has no drive letter - it was J before I installed XP Pro. During installation I just single partitioned the OS drive.

At re-start I noted that J drive had not 'loaded' everything else had quite normally. In disk management the drive is third as it was intended to be but is now 'dynamic' and 'foreign' and is disk 2 without a drive letter.

I have tried disconnecting it and re-connecting onto the IDE controller together with a CD-ROM, the BIOS sees both OK - as it always has.

The conversion back to basic seems to be the answer I am told but like I say I would like to hear from someone who has done it.

Don't know if that helps SD. Thanks so far for your help peeps.

[Mac the Knife]

I seem to remember that having a HDD and a CD on the same controller can be problematic, even with a correct set up with the HDD as master and the CD Drive as slave.Two Dogs

I think this is what you mean Two Dogs - it was a consideration at one time, but all modern boards support independent timing

"Independent Master/Slave Device Timing: Hard disk controllers on modern systems support running the master and slave device at different speeds, if one supports faster transfer modes than the other. Some systems, however, especially older ones, do not. If you are using two devices with radically different maximum transfer rates, and the chipset doesn't support independent timing, you will slow down the faster device to the speed of the slower one.

# Hard Disk and ATAPI Device Channel Sharing: There are several reasons why optical drives (or other ATAPI devices) should not be shared on the same channel as a fast hard disk. ATAPI allows the use of the same physical channels as IDE/ATA, but it is not the same protocol; ATAPI uses a much more complicated command structure. Opticals are also generally much slower devices than hard disks, so they can slow a hard disk down when sharing a channel. Finally, some ATAPI devices cannot deal with DMA bus mastering drivers, and will cause a problem if you try to enable bus mastering for a hard disk on a channel they are using."

But this has nothing to do with his problem.

I suspect, with Saab, that Windows is seeing this as a dynamic disk when it isn't - I shall research this further.

[Saab Dastard]

It would be useful to know the "before" condition of your PC -

What OS, how many physical disks, how partitioned, esp. if any extended partitions.

Just to confirm, are you consistent with the terms disk, drive, partition?

Then exactly how you proceeded with the installation of XP, what choices you made with the partitioning, formatting etc. and what you intended to end up with, along with what you now actually have.

Note that it is NOT possible to recover data on a disk that has been changed from dynamic to basic. It is a destructive process.

If you need to recover the data, can you put the disk into a PC running the original OS - or mount it in an external caddy? Win XP doesn't support dynamic drives that are removable.

SD

[Cornish Jack]

Trying to stir reluctant brain cells into remembering ... pretty certain that the Linux boot disk recognised EVERYTHING on the 'pooter' and allowed me to transfer the important files onto the drive that XP recognised. I then re-formatted the dynamic drive and made sure nothing important went onto it in future!
It might also be worth trying the external drive USB cables which are available and plugging it into a USB port - that has worked well in the past.

[CaptainFillosan]

Saab,

Three HD's. All single partitioned since 2003.

Three CD-ROM's. 1 DVD-R-RW 1 CD-ROM x 52 and 1 DVD player.

ONE hard drive and ONE CDM-ROM connected to IDE Controller as Master and Slave. Making the 4 Devices allowed and two on the IDE Controller is two more devices = 6 Devices. All happily playing with each other for three years on XP Pro. New XP Pro upgrade installed with SPS2. All devices seen but not the HDD connected to the controller. All instructions were directed to one drive only as a single partition and to be the OS drive.

Point about losing data is well noted about converting dynamic back to basic. This is why I must get it right first time and get it off before I do anything.

I am aware that I can copy the data OFF the drive onto another but which way is best. And, of course, the drive will have to be seen by the machine before I can do that.

The sequence is therefore important. Can I connect the miscreant onto IDE 2 on the mobo and copy the content onto my OS drive? The stuff on it has no connection to the OS drive and there is plenty of room on the latter.

I found this to consider and again your views would be helpful. http://www.alexnolan.net/articles/import_foreign_disks.htm

Thanks for your help too Mac and I have to say that this I suspect, with Saab, that Windows is seeing this as a dynamic disk when it isn't - I shall research this further. was in my simple thoughts.

Thanks to you too Cornish.

Ah computers!

CF

[Saab Dastard]

Am I right that you have the 2 on-board IDE controllers (primary and secondary) supporting 4 IDE devices, plus an additional controller card to connect the remaining 2?

And further, the "missing" drive is connected to the additional controller card?

If so, your suggestion to connect the "missing" drive to one of the on-board controllers is good - you can't do any harm, and you may well get the data off.

Are the drives formatted with FAT32 or NTFS? Shouldn't be an issue for this, but if you need to put the drive in another system it may make a difference, due to file security.

I'm a bit puzzled as to the "upgrade" from XP pro to XP pro with SP2 - was this a re-install or just installing SP2?

SD

[CaptainFillosan]

Thank you SD for your prompt reply.

Am I right that you have the 2 on-board IDE controllers (primary and secondary) supporting 4 IDE devices, plus an additional controller card to connect the remaining 2?


You are correct in both questions.

Are the drives formatted with FAT32 or NTFS? Shouldn't be an issue for this, but if you need to put the drive in another system it may make a difference, due to file security.


All HDD's are NTFS.

As for the upgrade, that was simply re-install to re-vitalise the system and the SP2 happened to come with it. The previous OS had too many programmes on it, and was getting stale. Just fancied cleaning things up! :ugh:

Got your view on the drive and moving data. Thanks again.

Any comment on the link above guys?

CF

[Mac the Knife]

Here is a free partition table viewer/editor - named Beeblebrox for all you Douglas Adams fans - http://students.cs.byu.edu/~codyb/

Just love it!

And here - http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/partitions/partition_types-1.html - is the best list I've found of partition ID codes.

Checkout the partition ID code, if it's wrong, change it. Just make some notes first, so you can change it to something else or back if you're wrong.

:ok:

Testdisk - http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk - is a better featured alternative, but there are plenty of other free partion editors.

[Saab Dastard]

I found this to consider and again your views would be helpful. http://www.alexnolan.net/articles/im...eign_disks.htm

In this situation, the premise is that you want to move an existing dynamic disk from one PC to another - I don't think that it is relevant in your case, as your situation is that the OS erroneously believes that it is a dynamic disk.

However - IF you can access and back up your data in another way, then there is no harm in trying to "import" the disk, if given the option. It might work, but I wouldn't risk it unless you have already got your data safe.

SD