I have an Asus M2NPV-VM motherboard with NVIDIA nForce 430 Chipset
SATA RAID controller on.
I am using the controller to connect to 4 disks:
2x160GB in mirror configuration and
2x400GB in a stripe configuration.
The Operating system, XP PRO SP3, sees 2 Drives:
one Basic Disk - 153GB as the system and boot partition
and one dynamic disk - 754GB for Data
I converted the DATA drive to Dynamic Because i planned on mirroring
it later.
a few hours ago i Booted it up and i now cant access the DATA drive.
In Disk management i can see the dynamic disk, DATA, shows as Offline
and has a red 'no entry' icon on it. when i click on reactivate disk i
get an error messege from the LDM(Logical Disk Manager) saying : "The
operation did not complete. Check the system Event Log for more
information on the error"
when i check the event viewer-system log i get this error messege:
Event Type: Error
Event Source: LDM
Event Category: None
Event ID: 2
Date: 19/08/2008
Time: 00:49:27
User: N/A
Computer: GEVER
Description:
INTERNAL Error - The disk group contains no valid configuration
copies (C10000B6).
I tryed booting to the recovery console, to see if i can see it there,
but when i log on and type MAP, i get a list, in which the DATA drive
is listed but with out a drive letter or a label just as :
?: \device\Harddisk1\partitio1
I tried running device manager in hidden device mode and removed
'ghost' devices by running the following commands:
set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
cd %SystemRoot%\System32
start devmgmt.msc
then removed drives that were ghosted and restarted to no avail still
can not import or reactivate.
i can find the files using disktest - http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Main_Page.
so i know(i assume?) the files and drives are ok, and i am almost sure
its a partitioning issue
can you please tell me how i can access the drive ?
I am assuming that the data is still intact because the controller
utilities cant find any thing wrong with it through post. i know i
might be wrong, but i have a feeling its to do with its partition
table.
Can any one help?
got it sorted, all credit to bill blanton of Windows XP hardware
forum.
i thought i'd post the solution to help any one else who gets in to
this sticky situation.
I ran ptedit32, a partition table editing tool, which i got from ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/englis.../pq/utilities/
Then selected the drive from the drop down box. The volume showed as
42 in the "Type"
field - which is the Dynamic Drive partition style.
I changed the partition style to 07 which is hpfs/NTFS and rebooted
after the reboot , chkdsk started automaticaly and checked the volume,
repaird a
few entries and windows started perfectly.
another reboot later (to auto reinstall the "new" basic drive) and all
is sorted.
one intersting thing to note is that this allow a conversion from
dynamic to basic
drive. contrary to microsoft documantation stating that a conversation
from basic
to dynamic is 'a one way irreversible convertion'.
actually 2 points....
the second is: ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR DATA!! this would have been so much
less stressfull
had i known i had a back up ready to be restored ...
then again, its quite expensive to back up 750GB of data
then again, do i really need to back up all these movies and music?
zaxxon wrote:
> got it sorted, all credit to bill blanton of Windows XP hardware
> forum.
> i thought i'd post the solution to help any one else who gets in to
> this sticky situation.
>
> I ran ptedit32, a partition table editing tool, which i got from
> ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/englis.../pq/utilities/
> Then selected the drive from the drop down box. The volume showed as
> 42 in the "Type"
> field - which is the Dynamic Drive partition style.
> I changed the partition style to 07 which is hpfs/NTFS and rebooted
> after the reboot , chkdsk started automaticaly and checked the volume,
> repaird a
> few entries and windows started perfectly.
> another reboot later (to auto reinstall the "new" basic drive) and all
> is sorted.
> one intersting thing to note is that this allow a conversion from
> dynamic to basic
> drive. contrary to microsoft documantation stating that a conversation
> from basic
> to dynamic is 'a one way irreversible convertion'.
As usual, there was a hidden Microsoft landmine waiting in the woods to
catch you. It's usually more of a surprise if nothing goes wrong.
> actually 2 points....
> the second is: ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR DATA!! this would have been so much
> less stressfull
> had i known i had a back up ready to be restored ...
> then again, its quite expensive to back up 750GB of data
> then again, do i really need to back up all these movies and music?
Well, if were looking to back up your data, then you could've just
mirrored your drive. Which was what you were originally trying to do in
first place, and it is how this problem started of course.
Were you looking for a dynamically updated mirror, or just a
point-in-time mirror? If you're looking for the latter, then just use a
partition duplicating utility like Boot It NG (BING) to make a single
copy. In the Linux/Unix world, there are plenty of software-based RAID
utilities available, which are much simpler to use than the Windows ones.
> Well, if were looking to back up your data, then you could've just
> mirrored your drive. Which was what you were originally trying to do in
> first place, and it is how this problem started of course.
>
> Were you looking for a dynamically updated mirror, or just a
> point-in-time mirror? If you're looking for the latter, then just use a
> partition duplicating utility like Boot It NG (BING) to make a single
> copy. In the Linux/Unix world, there are plenty of software-based RAID
> utilities available, which are much simpler to use than the Windows ones.
>
> Yousuf Khan
it was and is a real time mirror, i mirror the system partition and
back up the data there.
the other drive which i striped for faster access has loads of music,
films, CBTs, audio books, etc... which are all easily enough gathered
again, though a real pain in the back side. i wouldt want to use a
software based raid, because of the CPU penalty, and in windows you
have to use dynamic disks which are not accesible from ther system in
case you need to recover data.
zaxxon wrote:
> it was and is a real time mirror, i mirror the system partition and
> back up the data there.
> the other drive which i striped for faster access has loads of music,
> films, CBTs, audio books, etc... which are all easily enough gathered
> again, though a real pain in the back side. i wouldt want to use a
> software based raid, because of the CPU penalty, and in windows you
> have to use dynamic disks which are not accesible from ther system in
> case you need to recover data.
Well, most of the current motherboard-based RAID systems are really just
software RAID in disguise anyways. They don't have any additional
processors managing the RAID metadata, it's being done through software
on the CPU anyways.
error reactivating a dynamic hard drive 
Linear Mode
