ANY way to turn Dynamic HDD to basic...

[Drakul]

without losing data is it's separated in 3 partitions???

I bought this disk to back up all my data and now I see that Vista can't enven read the stupid thing???????
and apparently if it's several partitions i'm effed!

I'm very stressed out cause I don't know how to solve this.

 

[Joe Average]

Just posted in the other thread, and realistically the simple answer is: No, there's no reliable way to do it, unfortunately. Modern disk diagnostic and drive partitioning tools can't do it, and the only way I'd recommend myself is do a backup to some other location and don't ever ever ever EVER use Dynamic Drives/Disks again - there's just no reason to do it. Basic Drives/Disks do everything necessary in Windows as long as you plan ahead and know what you're doing...

SHAME ON YOU AGAIN!!!

 

[Drakul]

well but that's the thing that pisses me off is that I never asked for a dynamic drive.........
basically XP does it on its own and then Vista won't read it............

 

[Hurin]

well but that's the thing that pisses me off is that I never asked for a dynamic drive.........
basically XP does it on its own and then Vista won't read it............

Where exactly does XP randomly create a "dynamic disk" without first notifying you that it will be doing so? Each time I've spanned disks (which I've since ceased doing), Windows pretty clearly alerts you to the fact that the disk must first be converted to "dynamic." I'm pretty sure that the message is also accompanied by a warning that this will make it unreadable to other file systems and operating systems.

I can't think of an instance where XP would just randomly convert a disk to a dynamic disk "on its own."

Having said that, as others have said, you'll need to copy all of the data from the live OS to a standard disk.

 

[Drakul]

well I don't recall this popping up. I just partitions the HDD and formated each partition that's it.

back up is impossible since I backed up 350G and don't have enough space to do it.