Don W Posted May 7, 2011 Share Posted May 7, 2011 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pcdoc Posted May 7, 2011 Share Posted May 7, 2011 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dagamer34 Posted May 7, 2011 Share Posted May 7, 2011 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Don W Posted May 8, 2011 Author Share Posted May 8, 2011 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.powerdatarecovery.com/index.html Oh yeah, BTW, it's free for home users. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest no-control Posted May 8, 2011 Share Posted May 8, 2011 I do not recommend anyone else use this method. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Don W Posted May 8, 2011 Author Share Posted May 8, 2011 I do not recommend anyone else use this method. Because???? Would you just recommend I just loose all my data??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest no-control Posted May 9, 2011 Share Posted May 9, 2011 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Don W Posted May 9, 2011 Author Share Posted May 9, 2011 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest no-control Posted May 10, 2011 Share Posted May 10, 2011 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Don W Posted May 10, 2011 Author Share Posted May 10, 2011 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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