Dynamic disk unreadable after upgrading mobo, reinstalling XP Pro
From: funnyid (funnyid.1ggpsy_at_pcbanter.net)
Date: 11/29/04
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Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 02:24:41 +0000
SHORT VERSION OF MY QUESTION:
- Problem: Unable to access data drive - shows up as
Dynamic-Unreadable in Logical Disk Manager.
- Self-diagnosed cause of problem (http://tinyurl.com/6k5f8): "MBR or
extended boot record (EBR) corruption may also cause a basic disk to
appear as a damaged dynamic disk. This behavior occurs if a hexadecimal
0x42 value is contained in any one of the four partition table system-ID
fields in the MBR or in an extended partition's EBR. If Disk Management
reads a type 0x42 entry for a partition's system identification (ID),
it considers the disk to be a dynamic disk even if the disk never was
dynamic. "
- What's the best solution?
LONG, DETAILED VERSION:
- Here's my situation background: I was getting BSODs way too often on
my home-built PC, and I ended up determining that the problem was my 3
year old mobo with the cracked and discolored capacitors. So I
upgraded my mobo from a Socket A/AMD 760 EPoX board to a Socket
754/nForce3 Giga-Byte board. In the process, I also had to replace my
1GHz Athlon proc with a 3000+ Athlon64 and I put in 512MB of brand new
PC3200 RAM from Crucial. Everything else in the case stayed the same.
("Everything else in the case" = 128MB AGP card, 100MB Zip-Master on
IDE0, CD-RW-Slave on IDE0, boot drive-120GB EIDE WD1200JB-Master on
IDE1, and my data drive-120GB EIDE WD1200JB-Slave on IDE1)
- What Happened Next (details of how my problem arose): After
connecting all the old components to the new mobo and powering up, I
would get a very brief BSOD (I could never read the actual error) and
then the machine would re-boot. I researched the problem and
determined that I would have to re-install my WinXP Pro OS on my boot
drive (C:\ drive containing only OS and installed apps, approx 90% free
space). Due to an unexplained inability to boot from my XP CD (and a
failed attempt to use a set of 6 XP boot diskettes I downloaded), I was
unable to do the recommended Repair/in-place install of XP. So,
figuring that I didn't have any real data on my boot drive, I proceeded
to re-install WinXP Pro the only way I knew how: I booted from my old
Win2000 install CD, installed Win2000 and then ran the WinXP Pro CD
from within Win2000 to perform the upgrade. bummer I thought I would
re-install XP and be prompted to re-activate, but I could handle that.
At least my data would be safe... As a precautionary measure to make
sure I wouldn't lose my data, before I began the Win2000 install I
disconnected my data drive from its IDE and power cables - just to keep
this drive out of the picture entirely until I had my OS re-installed
and working. I don't know if this matters or not, but when I did the
Win2000 install on my C:\ drive, I formatted it (NTFS) and created a
70GB partition (leaving the rest of the 120GB drive as unpartitioned
space). At any rate, the Win2000 install went fine and the subsequent
WinXP install/upgrade went fine, too. I installed all of my mobo
chipset drivers (LAN, sound chip, etc.) and was ready to connect my
data drive.
- Here's where things went South: After I connected my data drive
(containing approx. 70GB of treasured data) XP did not display this
drive in My Computer. I went into the Disk Manager utility to see if
the drive showed up at all, and it was there, but it was labeled as
"Dynamic, Unreadable". WTF!?!
- What I've tried/thought of so far: I have done several hours of
research and troubleshooting and have come up with a bunch of possible
solutions to this problem. I have tried connecting the drive to a
different PC (running Win2000) and it still shows up in Disk Manager as
"Dynamic, Unreadable"... so I am left to assume that I am dealing with a
corrupt MBR (see http://tinyurl.com/6k5f8 ). I have run dmdiag /v and
verified that my data drive has a 0x42 system-id byte. I have
considered using Diskprobe to manually change this byte in the MBR
according to the MS KnowledgeBase instructions. I have thought about
just using a boot disk and typing in a FDISK /MBR to reset my MBR (what
will this do to my data?). I have even considered downloading and using
either MBRtool or DiskPatch 2.0 from http://www.diydatarecovery.nl/
(DiskPatch costs about $50).
- Here's where I need help: Given that (1) I have not seen/fixed this
problem before, and (2) I DO NOT want to lose my data, I am hesitant to
"pull the trigger" and pursue a fix until I am convinced that it will
have the desired results (ability to read my drive with no loss of
data). I am almost certain that there is nothing mechanically wrong
with the drive and I don't think I have done anything (yet) that could
have erased any of my precious data. It's just a matter of reading the
data, making a back-up of all of it, and then doing whatever I have to
do to get my OS to see the drive.
- What's the best solution? I'm looking for recommendations that will
give me the confidence to take the next step in fixing this problem.
-- funnyid
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