RE: Convert Dynamic Disk back to Basic Disk without data loss

Firstly, a big thanks to markymoo who provided the info on switching the code on the disk to convert it.

My old machine died (Striker extreme), the new motherboard (Maximus IV gene-z/gen3) I acquired doesn't have IDE compatibility, and 2 320gb IDE Seagates I had running are full of files I need and for some reason are not being read through a USB IDE device running the same operating system as on the machine they were created and operated, Windows 7 64.

1st drive worked perfectly but it turns out, the second drive was partitioned into 100GB and 200 GB. After changing bit 1C2 in sector 0 from 42 to 07, only the 100gb partition in this drive is now seen in Windows 7 64. Disk management shows the drive as a basic disk with a 289.09 GB NTFS healthy (primary partition) but everywhere else only the 100 GB partition is accessed. I'm missing the 200GB partition.Sorry I have no recollection or record of what type of file system or partition the 200GB was originally made.

Can anyone let me know if there is another edit that needs to be or can be done to get the other partition recognized? Else I need to source an old machine running well I don't know as the machine that died on me was also running Windows 7 64 and had no issues seeing these drives? weird.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, kids photo's are what I'm trying to get access to here.

Matthew

 

Matthew,

Try this....

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=038

 

M__R,

Any luck?

Markymoo's method only recovers one partition. The TeraByte method only seems to recover one partition too.

I now have a method that will recover all partitions.

 

Thanks for the reply. I will be truing this today and will post results

 

OK I just read the Terabyte method and it scares me as I think that method cannot be reversed once I try it and furthermore I have no idea what my partition where when created (simple vs extended etc.) If it was not simple I and in trouble.

Brian K, in your second response, you mention you now have a method that will recover all partitions? could please explain?


Also a question. I assume that I can use the Markymo method to revert the disk back to dynamic by just changing that bite back to "42" is this a correct assumption?

And secondly I was hopping that someone who knows the coding of the disk that is seen in HxD could let me/us know if there is another sector where a simple bit edit could render the second partition on the drive as readable.


I'm thinking that the simplest solution is to likely find a machine with IDE support and install the drive there and make a back up from that machine. I believe that the issue with my set up is that the USB bridge is what is causing the inability to see the dynamic drive as this drive resided and operated on the same OS before my machine dies. I'm hoping native IDE support will resolve this as long as I can revers the Markymoo operation.

Thanks to all for you feedback and help.


Matthew

 

Matthew,

I agree.

If you thought that was scary you don't want to see my method. It involves deleting the Dynamic drive and then undeleting the partitions. But it works every time and recovers all partitions.