17 replies to this topic

[donwieber]

Somehow at one stage of installing WHS 2011 I converted a disk to Dynamic Disk. I just built a new WHS server from scratch and am importing the data but now it does not access the drive. So how do I convert it back to a Basic Disk and not loose the data.

[pcdoc]

Somehow at one stage of installing WHS 2011 I converted a disk to Dynamic Disk. I just built a new WHS server from scratch and am importing the data but now it does not access the drive. So how do I convert it back to a Basic Disk and not loose the data.

Sorry, it is a one way street. You will have to back it up, covert, then restore.

[dagamer34]

Sorry, it is a one way street. You will have to back it up, covert, then restore.

Definitely learned this the hard way. It's a good thing I had a backup.

[donwieber]

After hours of trying different programs I finally stumbled across a tool that lets you open up a HD that is formatted as a dynamic disk and it lets you copy off the data you want to a different drive. What a life saver, literally, because I think my wife would have killed me if I would have lost her shows that were on that drive because now I remember why I converted the disk to dynamic because I mirrored it at one point then I removed the mirror because I did not think I needed to waste a drive just to have copies of TV shows.

Anyway, the HD Tool that worked for me is at http://www.powerdata....com/index.html

Oh yeah, BTW, it's free for home users.

[no-control]

I do not recommend anyone else use this method.

[donwieber]

I do not recommend anyone else use this method.

Because????

Would you just recommend I just loose all my data???

[no-control]

You didn't provide enough information about your setup (past & present) nor is there enough info presented regarding what the real issues were.

What setup did you have before (both hardware and data)?
Why did you need to go back to a basic disk?
Why couldn't you access the data from the dynamic partition?
Why couldn't you backup the data the format and restore the data?

I will never recommend a 3rd party work around unless the specifics are addressed. While it may have worked for you. It may cause someone to lose their data should there situation be slightly different.

While its great you were able to source a fix that worked for you. Ends do not justify the means. This is a public searchable forum, I don't think adding a disclaimer that this isn't recommended is out of line.

**Without knowing the specifics of your situation the way I would recommend is to backup the data on the volume, format the drive and then migrate the data from the backup to the new partition.

[donwieber]

You didn't provide enough information about your setup (past & present) nor is there enough info presented regarding what the real issues were.

What setup did you have before (both hardware and data)?
Why did you need to go back to a basic disk?
Why couldn't you access the data from the dynamic partition?
Why couldn't you backup the data the format and restore the data?

I will never recommend a 3rd party work around unless the specifics are addressed. While it may have worked for you. It may cause someone to lose their data should there situation be slightly different.

While its great you were able to source a fix that worked for you. Ends do not justify the means. This is a public searchable forum, I don't think adding a disclaimer that this isn't recommended is out of line.

**Without knowing the specifics of your situation the way I would recommend is to backup the data on the volume, format the drive and then migrate the data from the backup to the new partition.

I thought I had answered those questions but here are the answers to your questions
What setup did you have before - I wanted to software mirror my data on my WHS Ver. 1 so I had to convert my disk to a dynamic and then add a mirror. I then decided to break the mirror for reasons of my own. So now my data is on a dynamic disk which was ok at the time since I could still access it.

Why did you need to go back to a basic disk? - I installed WHS 2011. When I installed it the server no longer recognized the dynamic disk.

Why couldn't you access the data from the dynamic partition? See answer above

Why couldn't you backup the data the format and restore the data? If I would have known that installing a new version of WHS would make it non-readable I would have backed it up before hand, but I did not and did not realize the problem till after I had installed 2011.

So as you see, I was stuck with the fact that I could not retrieve my data any other way. I searched this forum and everyone said I was out of luck. I then found a solution in the Hard Drive Tool mentioned. Which brings me back to my question as to why you think this was a bad idea, the way you make it sound, I broke some cardinal sin by retrieving my data off of my hard drive " Ends do not justify the means ". Is there some other way I could have gotten the data off of the drive??? What is wrong with using the tool I did??? I thought that if someone else was in the same boat, and was faced with losing all their data, they might like to know there is a solution.

[no-control]

Why it wasn't readable is what I'm getting at, not the fact you used a third party tool, and no I didn't make it out to be a cardinal sin. I did however state that I do not recommend using 3rd party tools. Using a 3rd party tool to retrieve your data answers YOUR problem (retrieving data), not THE problem (unreadable Dynamic volume). I still do not know why the disk was unreadable... I've pulled dynamic volumes from mirrors and stuck them in other machines and pulled the data down without issue. I was trying to ascertain what you did that caused this to not be the case. Installing WHS2011 still doesn't answer the question as to why it wasn't accessable, so pardon me for trying to troubleshoot the real problem.

[donwieber]

I do not not why it was unreadable, the only thing I did was install WHS 2011 over Ver 1 and then when I went to Explorer and the drive did not show up so I went to disk management and it was listed as Foreign. When I tried to import the dynamic disk a message came up stating that the drive would be formatted so I did not import the disk. I tried to let windows read it but I could not get any data off of it. That is when I found the third party tool that mounted the drive in a virtual window and let me copy off the data. I do not know what else I could have done.

Thanks

Don

[no-control]

Wow that is odd. I'm guessing you didn't try it on another machine? Curious if that would have worked. When you installed 2011 did you remove the drives from the pool first? Now that I think about it was this drive part of the pool? If you didn't remove it from the pool first I can see where the issue might have come from.

Like I said I'm glad you could recover the data using the 3rd party tool and in your case it looks like a reasonable thing to do.

[Bailifei]

it seems that if u convert a basic disk to dynamic disk, u can never convert it backup without formatting. that's weird totally.
fortunately i got a free partition manager that can convert dynamic disk to basic without formatting.
hope it can help u guys.

[ikon]

3rd party tools can be dangerous, but they can also be very useful. Before using a 3rd party disk tool for the first time, I either use CloneZilla to duplicate to another disk, or to create an image of the drive that I can restore to a drive if everything goes sideways. I agree with no-control in the sense that using an unknown tool on the only copy of some data is not the wisest approach.

[cupwater]

for the purpose of converting dynamic disk to basic disk without data losing can be reached by Aomei Dynamic Disk Converter which has solved many users problem on the conversion from dynamic disk to basic disk. (:

[MarkJohnson]

Sorry to revive an old thread, but I have the exact same issue and found a solution.

I too had a RAID1 that I unraided and reinstalled WHS2011 and assumed it would pick it up. What I read was it didn't get picked up because the dynmic disk has security on it to be locked to a particular installation. I could never find a solution so I decided to go ahead and experiment on one of the drives.

First, right-clicking on the drive in disk management gave me two options:

Import Foreign Disks...
Convert to Basic Disk

From what I read the Foriegn import wouldn't destroy anything so I tried it first. and violla it changed it to a simple volume and seems fully restored.

Not sure if the OP had this Foreign option or not, but mine was labled right under the Dynamic Drive lable. Maybe it was originally removed and readded in update since whs2011 is a crippled version of 2008 R2?

Hopefully this clears things up.

-=Mark=-

[jmwills]

cookice2013....I think you violated the terms of the forum by posting content about password cracking. Is the link posted your site?

[ikon]

I'm also trying to figure out what password resetting has to do with converting dynamic disks to basic The post seems like an advert.