Dynamic Disks and Vista

A

Anarchist4000

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jun 10, 2001
Messages
1,659
Ok does anyone know how exactly these things work in Vista? All the documentation i've seen from Microsoft states that all versions of Vista support dynamic disks. I've got a couple disks i've been trying to import but it won't even give me the option of importing them. They just show as offline dynamic volumes. XP reads and imports them just fine but Vista seems to be struggling with them.

Any ideas on how to make these stupid things work?
 
Ok I think I found the problem. Microsoft apparently messed up all the documentation and mislabeled their products. Only Business and Ultimate seem to support dynamic disks despite everything on their website pointing to the contrary.

Beware.
 
You have GOT to be shitting me.
I'm running home premium, and I've been googling this all night

I INSTALLED Vista from a dynamic drive, now that i am in vista, it shows as an offline drive.

Awesome, I KNEW I didn't have everything taken care of.
Even with running the upgrade advisor.

Damn.

Guess I'm putting my old HDD back in and booting off of it.
And converting to basic disks.
 
Yeah it knows they're there and what they are it just won't put the volumes online so you can do anything with them. The issue definitely pissed me off. Turned a simple install into a marathon of moving files around so I could get them converted to basic disks.

I basically just said screw it and bought a RAID card to make the issue go away. With all the video I have i'd rather have one big disk than a bunch of small ones. You'd think an OS geared towards being a HTPC with Media Center would support combining drives together.
 
Anarchist4000 said:
Yeah it knows they're there and what they are it just won't put the volumes online so you can do anything with them. The issue definitely pissed me off. Turned a simple install into a marathon of moving files around so I could get them converted to basic disks.
Click to expand...

A day late and a dollar short, as they say... But, this:

http://thelazyadmin.com/index.php?/archives/161-Converting-DynamicDisks-Back-to-Basic-Disks.html

Made my version of your problem go away much quicker.
 
Would work if you had a bunch of simple volumes but I have the data stripped across multiple drives. Simply hacking it back to a basic disk isn't really an option.
 
Anarchist4000 said:
Would work if you had a bunch of simple volumes but I have the data stripped across multiple drives. Simply hacking it back to a basic disk isn't really an option.
Click to expand...

Missed that part of the story, i didn't see where you said the disks were stripped
 
Hopefully that information would be useful to someone else that just used simple volumes. Although it looks a little risky and if you backed up all the files anyways it seems like it would have defeated the purpose.
 
I don't know about you, but I had a 300Gb and a 500Gb, both transplanted to Vista from XP. And after seeing the dreaded 'offline dynamic disk' I knew I didn't have another 800Gb to store the data while breaking the drive back down to simple, so I took a chance on the 300Gb, which mostly had recoverable media on it, and did the fix I listed above... It's actually far less work and dangerous than the instructions make it appear and was over in 3 minutes. Drive was perfectly readable within Vista.

It guess the moral of the story is 'back-up, back-up, back-up...' ? :)
 
im having the exact same problem, purchased Vista Home Premium x64 OEM, done a clean install (as it aint supposed to be able to upgrade) and it doesnt see my 2 stripped dynamic disks :(

then i came across an oddity, if i stuck the dvd back into the drive, it allowed me to upgrade, so for giggles i did

the strange thing was, it now seen my stripped discs perfectly! HOORAY i thought!

Nope :( although the stripped dynamic disks where available, any app that used MSCOMCTL.OCX died

So theres something on the OEM x64 disks that will allow you to access your stripped dynamic disks, it must simply be disabled by m$ on first install, just needs someone with the knowhow to figure it out
 
It might be as simple as finding a tool capable of bringing the drives online. I was playing around with some command prompt stuff and could do just about anything with the volumes I wanted except bring them online.
 
Anarchist4000 said:
It might be as simple as finding a tool capable of bringing the drives online. I was playing around with some command prompt stuff and could do just about anything with the volumes I wanted except bring them online.
Click to expand...

I am having the SAME problem, but still havent been able to find a FIX.
I have Windows VISTA Home Premium... and a WD Sata 500GB
Drive works fine in win XP but partitions dont show on Vista and the drive is OFFLINE!

Anyone found a solution how to fix this?
 
as noted on the page, for multiple partitions you need to edit more than one spot. it works...

...works...

however, since my word and experiences aren't enough, feel free to read the feedback on the original page. This has become a sizable problem it seems, with more and more people moving dynamic drives over to vista and then using this as the solution. I wouldn't be surprised to see something from Microsoft at some point, meanwhile my drives have been golden for weeks now.

Of course... I'm assuming NO responsibility for your drives or data
 
finny76 said:
I have 2 partitions. How would I select/edit the 2nd one?
Click to expand...

This is from the feedback section of the page...

"If the drive has more than one partition, you'll have to change 0x42 to 0x07
multiple times."

... I'd look for 0x42 in another spot. I had single partitions, so I didn't have to do it.
 
mutazx said:
This is from the feedback section of the page...

"If the drive has more than one partition, you'll have to change 0x42 to 0x07
multiple times."

... I'd look for 0x42 in another spot. I had single partitions, so I didn't have to do it.
Click to expand...

I tried to look for 0x42 values in other spots BUT was unable to find any.

Has anyone used the above method for DISKS that has 2 or more partitions?
IF so, we would apprecaite if you could help us :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top