[SOLVED] Installed a new windows onto a NVME SSD, now I cannot access my dynamic spanned hard drive.

[AfkToilet]

Hi,

I recently purchased a new NVME SSD to install a fresh windows on and prior to the installation, I made the mistake of not unplugging all my other hard drives before.

I have several other hard drives one being a 2TB dynamic disk with a spanned drive (I had a M drive and D drive) which shows up as "foreign" under disk management and when I try to "import the foreign disks", one of the spanned volumes has a "data incomplete" condition which when I click OK to import, gives me the warning that I will be losing data because I have not moved all my disks to this system.

https://imgur.com/a/STFoftn

View: https://imgur.com/a/STFoftn


How do I "move" all my disks to this system? I just want to eventually have access to these files, back them up and convert the disk into basic to use as an external hard drive using those HDD enclosures.

I have tried converting the disk to basic prior to trying importing the foreign disk using some of those free disk management tools (which are supposed to do the conversion without data loss) to try and avoid this step but I keep getting an error.

Was there any step during the new windows installation from BIOS or anything else that may have caused this or am I completely misunderstanding how dynamic hard drives and spanned drives work?


Please if you have any suggestions or how to fix this without data loss let me know because I cannot figure this out for the life of me.

Thank you

 

[white.a.drew]

Hi,

I recently purchased a new NVME SSD to install a fresh windows on and prior to the installation, I made the mistake of not unplugging all my other hard drives before.

I have several other hard drives one being a 2TB dynamic disk with a spanned drive (I had a M drive and D drive) which shows up as "foreign" under disk management and when I try to "import the foreign disks", one of the spanned volumes has a "data incomplete" condition which when I click OK to import, gives me the warning that I will be losing data because I have not moved all my disks to this system.

https://imgur.com/a/STFoftn

View: https://imgur.com/a/STFoftn


How do I "move" all my disks to this system? I just want to eventually have access to these files, back them up and convert the disk into basic to use as an external hard drive using those HDD enclosures.

I have tried converting the disk to basic prior to trying importing the foreign disk using some of those free disk management tools (which are supposed to do the conversion without data loss) to try and avoid this step but I keep getting an error.

Was there any step during the new windows installation from BIOS or anything else that may have caused this or am I completely misunderstanding how dynamic hard drives and spanned drives work?


Please if you have any suggestions or how to fix this without data loss let me know because I cannot figure this out for the life of me.

Thank you

Have you tried to clone the drive

 

[AfkToilet]

Have you tried to clone the drive

No, how do I do that?

 

[SkyNetRising]

Spanned volume means - it is spanned across multiple drives.
You have to connect all the drives, that contain this spanned volume. Only then you can import foreign disk.

In your screenshot only single dynamic disk is visible. There should be more.
Do not use any 3rd party software for dynamic to basic conversion, if you have spanned volumes.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Have you tried to clone the drive

Cloning dynamic drive? What purpose would that serve?
Have you ever cloned a dynamic drive?

 

[white.a.drew]

Cloning dynamic drive? What purpose would that serve?
Have you ever cloned a dynamic drive?

If I am remembering correctly yes, but I can't say yes with 100% certainty I'm almost certain I have though when my dad was upgrading his PC he didn't want hdd's Andy more only ssd's and he had a few drives set this way and I cloned all to the ssd's no issue.

 

[AfkToilet]

Thanks everyone, I ended up connecting the hard drive to another PC, back it all up, clean it and start fresh.