Hybrid Dynamic MBR Hard Disk??

Hi. I’ve had Paragon Backup & Recovery for a couple of years. Last September I was tempted to upgrade and now have Hard Disk Manager 2011 Suite. I sort of know my way around my PCs, I’ve been using them for close on 28 years, but ask me for DOS commands and I don’t remember most of them, as I have some neurological problems which effect my recall so usually I start something like I’m about to embark on from almost scratch, then hopefully I have a trail. I have a PC which I’ve had upgraded over the past few years and now is ready to upgrade to Win 7 64bit. I have two hard drives installed, the original one (68mb) which is running XP Pro (the OS was an OEM) and a new one a Samsung with 1xTB. I have an external drive with approx 200mb free. The Win7 upgrade is on a dongle, and to add to it all when the hardware was being upgraded I was informed my current drive ‘was on the way out’!
Normally I should have to reinstall XP on the new drive and then upgrade, but I am informed/have read that I should be able miss out having to do this and jump to Windows 7. I hoped that I could migrate all the applications to the External Back up hard drive, and then when the upgrade has been completed reinstall or upgrade the Apps to one that are compatible with Win7 or runs those in either XP Mode or Virtual PC.
I was checking Hard Disk Manager and was informed I could not use the Samsung as it was a ‘Hybrid Dynamic MBR Hard Disk’. Could this be that I’ve used the drive to back up recently when my external went kaput (now have a new one) and I would not receive this message if I reformatted the drive? I have done a few reinstallations over the years, and did one (on this PC) and lost a file, which I located on an older PC. So I am proceeding with this with a great deal of trepidation and would appreciate any advice my using Paragon HDMngr and the title query. Sorry if this a bit long winded!
Cheers from Blighty. BC

 

Are you sure you want 64 bit W7? Your processor has to be capable of running it and the principle advantage to most users is that it allows addressing more than 4GB of RAM (actually around 3.5GB useful). The downside is that there may not be 64-bit drivers for your hardware - this is where a lot of 64-bit installs fall down. The 32-bit version of W7 tends to be less problematic and is a reasonable upgrade from XP, IMO.

Look at your Samsung in Windows Disk Management and see what it is called. If it says it is Dynamic, reformat it to a Simple Volume and see if that cures your problem.

You cannot do an upgrade from XP to W7 by dumping it on top of XP and letting it sort it out - that requires Vista as the current OS. You will need to install W7 and then install your applications from their installation files so all folders and registry entries are properly setup. The bright side of this is that you only should install what you really need and see it as a chance to get rid of all the garbage that has accummulated.

Be sure you make a good backup of your data files before you start wiping and writing. Once you have the system up and running you can copy your data files to the new location.

 

Hi seekforever. Thanks for your quick reply. I am committed to 64bit as I've purchased it. Have checked and the only hardware I'm certain cannot be used is my Iomega backup software, but it HD should still be usable, had a mate check. Got 4gb of Ram installed and the AMD Ahthlon 11 X4 640 will run it. Many thanks for your advice, I was reading a Reply of yours on the Forum last night before I composed mine, very informative. Cheers BC