Dynamic disk

[bcrr25]

Hi,
I have a 1 TB hard drive that was working perfectly as a basic disk. It had 3 partitions. 1 for system and 2 for file storage. And had an unlocated space. When I created the partition and formated the unlocated space my disk turned into dynamic. Stupid me 🙁

I bought a solid state hard drive and restablished my system in this new drive. My question is, to get my old 1 TB disk functioning again, can I just click on reactivate disk on Disk Management ? Without data loss?

Basically I just want my partitions and data back before I made the mistake of partitioning the last unlocated space and turning a basic disk to dynamic.

This 1 TB hard drive was not a RAID or anything fancy. Just a basic disk with 3 partitions.

- Reactivate disk will work to recover my old partitions and data?

Thanks.
Bruno.

 

[quesionboy]

Hi,
I have a 1 TB hard drive that was working perfectly as a basic disk. It had 3 partitions. 1 for system and 2 for file storage. And had an unlocated space. When I created the partition and formated the unlocated space my disk turned into dynamic. Stupid me 🙁

I bought a solid state hard drive and restablished my system in this new drive. My question is, to get my old 1 TB disk functioning again, can I just click on reactivate disk on Disk Management ? Without data loss?

Basically I just want my partitions and data back before I made the mistake of partitioning the last unlocated space and turning a basic disk to dynamic.

This 1 TB hard drive was not a RAID or anything fancy. Just a basic disk with 3 partitions.

- Reactivate disk will work to recover my old partitions and data?

Thanks.
Bruno.

Hi, this problem is caused by the numbers of your primary partition. As we know the MBR disk could contain at most 4 primary partition. If there were 4 primary already when you create another one, it will convert the disk like you. (just check your disk configuration, there must be one hidden primary partition, like "system reserved")
To solve this problem, there are two ways. If you know how to use WinHex, you could change it back to basic without data loss. Just modify the start 0th sector from "42" (dynamic disk) to "07" (basic disk).
If you don't know it, you could only use other third-party software, but I'm afraid that is not free. As I know, the Dynamic Disk Converter could do this (you could google it, sorry I can't paste it here, because it is easy to Let others misunderstanding I'm a spammer)

 

[bcrr25]

Thanks for the help. I will try that....

Thanks.

 

[bcrr25]

I've tried dynamic disk converter but the software tells me that didn't found any dynamic disk. I'm connecting my damaged hard drive via an external case (usb connection) could be that? My disk appears in the windows disk management as Dynamic Invalid with a red exclamation mark. Thanks

 

[quesionboy]

You'd better connect your disk as internal disk, not external. BTW, what's your OS version? As I know Windows OS home Edition doesn't support dynamic disk, and this your dynamic disk may showed as Invalid disk

 

[bcrr25]

Thanks for the answer. I solved my problem using EaseUS Partition manager. Connected my hard drive via and external usb case to a computer with windows xp and using the software converted to basic disk again without data loss. Thanks for the help.

 

[SomeRelax]

Hi all and thanks for help
I have same problem as "bcrr25"
and i used "quesionboy" method (hex editor)
but this method just bring back one of my 3 partitions and 2 others are still missing
what can i do now?
how should i recover them?
i have a lot of data on my partitions and badly need them
thanks in advance