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Crawling Across Chaos and Time Without End
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Crawling Across Chaos and Time Without End
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Sep
26
2009
How to Convert a Dynamic Disk to Basic Disk in Windows 7 Posted on 13:08, September 26th, 2009 by StrangelyFirstly, Do Not Dance with the Devil!I made the mistake (again!) of trying dynamic disks with my new Windows 7 installation. I must have been asleep – the use of this system is seriously frowned upon for most users. It has several pitfalls not least that it’s high-end Windows specific (i.e not home, basic etc), and it’s impossible to clone partitions for backup or moves, say.
To convert from basic to dynamic is frighteningly easy (see screen shot). The reversing option disappears once it’s done and in virtually all Disk Partition Software You’ll see in the screen-shot that there are 3 disks. Disk 0 & disk 1 were an effort at user-data mirroring originally until I realised what I pile of poo I’d just landed in. All the initial recommendations were negative and the prognosis didn’t look good. See:
Solution
However, this post gave me a pointer which eventually led to here and the HxD disc editing tool, here. The Dynamic Disk Converter is a paid for solution and would have worked. But I tried the Hex Editor approach after a bit more reading around the subject…. WARNING: See my comment on Dynamic Disk Converter here – added 27/7/2010(SP)
Specifically, all 42‘s must be converted to 07. The highlighted area contains the bit to edit and the numbers to edit in this area are those in column 02 that are 42. So change all the 42′s to 07′s in column 02 in the four highlighted lines. (n.b. The screendump was taken after I’d fixed the disc, so all the 42s are now 07 and some partitions have been deleted.)
Do NOT twiddle anything else. CaveatThis post in the thread says to just alter one line – this is wrong! (There’s a confusing addition at the bottom. This relates directly to my experience, so yes, all real primary partitions are numbered 07) And this post says to do them all – this is right. It shows 3. In my original pre-editted state, I had 4! Handily, this shows the reason (I think), why you can only have 4 primary partitions on a drive. Finale and Actual Actions Summary
Now you’ll see I have only two 07′s in the column (in the screenshot above). These map to the two partitions showing in my Disk Management full screen-shot here. For some reason, it had ‘remembered’ other volumes I’d made on the disk – that’s why I had 4 to do. I was quite prepared to buy the paid-for software. It looked good and worth the cash. Instead:
PlansI’ve now got two new hard drives in the post. When these have arrived and are installed, I’ll use standard tools to move partitions and get user data onto a RAID mirror assembly. This will increase data integrity and give me a better backup. You’d think that outboard backups would be fine, wouldn’t you? Well I bought a Western Digital 1TB Studio Edition which worked okay for a while…. But it ran so hot the eSATA/USB circuitry failed! I dismantled it and found the drive to be okay – this is the third disk, Disk 2 in the screen-shots! Now, I have a new system with a better, heavy-duty power supply, adequate (and quiet cooling), with the whole thing protected behind an APC UPS which I’ve had for a year. Sticking to basic disks should make backups simpler and the whole thing should be more reliable – certainly more so than the WD Studio thing which is a pile of hot plastic pants.
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, any ‘partitions’, now called volumes, just show as one big monolithic slab of pale yellow disk that has any possible action greyed out! This was really bad as it was on the system drive…
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Dynamic Disk convertor did not work for me paid over the money for it. I wish I had sssn your post earlier. Took my drive and put it into another computer running windows 2008 server and bingo recognised the drive got all the data off and then converted the disk.
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So that’s manual editting 1, paid for software Nil!
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Ok, sleepy in the morning, didn’t realize I’m trying to create fifth partition, voila, dynamic hell.
It was on a new machine, so I made backup on a usb flash and went for what the Internet had for me. Tried your solution, rebooted, Windows working, fine.
However, instead of three enigmatic raw partitions originaly on the HP notebook I now have one enigmatic raw partition. But hey, didn’t know what’s there before, don’t know now :).
Big thanks for this, I just don’t have time for recovering my system right now, so this really saved me.
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@Tom
Glad it worked!
One extra partition on your HP machine “could” be the backup BIOS-type thing that came on all Compaq machines until they were bought by HP. The other partition is probably the invisible partition that’s made as part of the dynamic disk hell. It’s actually a database that stores heaps of data relevant to the dynamic disks.
So now you have one standard partition, and it’s all working fine – ergo, job done. Just be careful in case your machine is set up in the old Compaq fashion. There are quite a few machines about like this, and if you delete the BIOS partition there’s a separate restore route to replace this…..(Acer sometimes do this as well)
(This is one of the reasons I stick to bog standard mainboards and componentry nowadays and stay away from bespoke things from major manufacturers unless I’m sure that they are completely wipe-able and restore-able from a standard Windows/Linux boot disk. It’s also why I will never, ever fall into the dynamic disk trap again!)
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Hi,
I went through your solutions for this problem. It all seems fine except that I have only one disk on my laptop. I didn’t know there were two other volumes that didn’t show and when I created another one, I ended up with this. Now if I do the HxD method, given that I have only one harddisk, can I still boot Windows? And if I do a full system recovery, can I set things straight? I mean, get back to basic disks? I am willing to do anything but I cannot pay….just bought a new HP laptop. Thanks.
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If it’s fine…what’s the problem? ;-) You seem a bit confused so let me know exactly where you are with your system and changes. I’ll help where I can but as soon as mine started working properly, I stopped playing with the tool!
But guessing;
When you use HxD, you examine a disc at a time. By default it’s read-only for safety. So if you only have one drive, you only have to do it once.
What you have to look at is how many “07″ or “42″‘s you have. If you are sure you only have one boot (usually C) drive, then there should be just one “07″ when you are done and finished. Any extra one is a hidden partition for the dynamic disk database…(This is the status in my screen dump above). You just set this “42″ to “07″ if you haven’t already and then delete it to recover the small bit of disc space it takes up, using the standard windows disc management tool.
You can tell your boot disc as there’s a number “13″ on the same line as your “07″. You should be able to boot your windows from this disc. (This “13″ pops up a lot in old DOS type talk and I think this is what’s going on.)
A problem for you is the exact location of your system restore information. As far as I’m aware, system restore doesn’t dig down as far as dynamic disc information, just files on the partition.
I didn’t do this route and had all my important files saved to alternative locations before I started.
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Well it goes like this. I could see only two volumes C, with Windows installed and D, the one with the Recovery files. C had a capacity of 450GB, so I decided to create more and I ended up with a dynamic disk. I thought I could live with it until I realized that I cannot install other OS on a dynamic disk.
I can see 7 volumes in Windows Disk Management. C, D, and three volumes that I created. There is another NTFS called SYSTEM and a FAT32 called HP_TOOLS which I am guessing contains all the data of the HP exclusive tools on the computer.
When I load up HxD, I have “42″ in the exact same place as you. Now, if I change all those to 07, can I get back to Basic Disk. Is that what you did? I am a little apprehensive because you seem to have more than 1 hard disk while I have only 1. However, Tom and I seem to have the same problem. If it works, I just want to be sure, all the HP exclusive tools continue to work, like the volume and playback control. I am using a hp dv7 series laptop, if that helps in anyway. Right now I am backing up my data, in case I need to do a system restore.
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I meant a full system recovery. Not just a system restore.
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THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!
I got back my basic disk again!!!! The only difference was that, the recovery partition was empty and there was another 1MB volume for god knows what reason. THANKS!!!
I solemnly swear I shall never use dynamic disks ever again, despite the easy method you have provided to convert to basic disks again.
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@Plaknas
“I solemnly swear” – I like that! I too have a mental “note to self” to never, ever, contemplate the dynamic disc thing again!
You seem to have things sorted out fine. As you’ll have guessed, the HxD tool just looks at a single hard drive at a time, so the only benefit to me for having several discs was having a place to copy my files to. When I did the process, I disconnected my backup discs to ensure that there was no possible way that the data could get mangled.
I also see what you mean by the “recovery partition”. I forgot that several manufacturers will do this by default i.e. split a physical drive into two for backup purposes.
HP Tools: If you fish around HP support, I’m certain that you can download new copies of the tools with instructions about how to set up a HP drive to the maker’s specifications. You could certainly do it for old Compaq machines from 10 years ago. So I shouldn’t worry about losing them too much. The tricky bit is if they’ve split the BIOS in the old Compaq way. Even so, there should be full instructions and support files for how to do all this.
Caveat: For the above, you will, of course, need access to a second machine to store files and make setup discs etc.
The 1Mb Volume: After you’ve set things to “07″, this shows up, as it did for me. It is in fact the hidden database volume that Dynamic Disks use for their lookups. You can delete it once you are done using disc manager and then add the extra space to your standard C-drive, or whatever using the same tool.
BTW: using Win7, it makes a hidden volume of 100Mb for it’s own use which the disc management tool call a “system, active, primary partition” – so don’t delete that if you are on Win7!!! The standard C-drive is called “boot, page file, crash dump, primary partition” in it’s description.
As a further aside, I’ve moved away from having multiple OSs on hard drives in the old way (as you are intending to do). I now use a FREE Sun virtualisation tool called VirtualBox, which I can heartily recommend, it being much more stable than Microsoft’s XPMode thing. Give it a try if you are after using other OSs.
Currently I use it to access my work remotely via a WinXPsp3 window as the Citrix software is only 32-bit and won’t work on my 64-bit Win7. So you can install any program (including anti-virus) that you want into the virtual OS. I also have another XP for sandbox testing or browsing the dark side of the internet(you take ‘snapshots’ of the OS when it’s nice and stable, then if it’s infected or corrupted, just delete the current snapshot and use the good, previous one). I also have installations of Fedora11, Mandriva2009.1, Suse11.1, Ubuntu 9.10 as well which can all be fired up at a click.
the good thing about VirtualBox is that it’s almost platform independant. So you can install it in Linux, Apple, Solaris or Windows, and tyhen run nearly any other (or the same!) OS in a window. You map what drives you want to see in your virtual OS that exist on the HOST PC, or not – as you want. I’ve even mapped virtual drives through to my work OS inside the Citrix client.
This is all very weird to talk about – a bit like “The Matrix” with programs running inside programs….
Give it a go. It means you can leave your HP Laptop’s drive alone and won’t have to bother with boot managers etc, which can sometimes go wrong!
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Well yes that 1MB partition was deleted anyway when I returned to Basic Disks. The important thing is everything is normal. I should just remember never to make more than 4 volumes. Yes, there is a system volume of around 100MB, it can’t be deleted. I will definitely try out VirtualBox. Thanks for all the hlp.
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Glad to help and share my experience. Now spread the word – “Don’t use dynamic disks!!!” ;-)
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Modify disk sector is complex compare with use Dynamic Disk Converter. the utility DDC is a choice easy and safe, i chose it. to download: http://www.dynamic-disk.com/download.html
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@winslive
I gave the link for Dynamic Disk Converter in my original post. Thanks for your your information on your successful usage of it, and the extra link.
Since then, the score is 3-1 for Hex Editing versus Dynamic Disk Converter.
One person (@David) actually wrecked their disc using Dynamic Disk Converter.
My experience, once I’d got the hang of the HxD hex editor program and could see what it was up to, was that it was as easy and straightforward as editing a Word document.
So I think the message is that you pays your money and takes your choice!
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Hi!
I have a single 1TB disk and its dynamic after installing Windows Virtual PC X( I have Windows 7. The question is can i install later on it another OS? If yes i leave it dynamic, because i dont want to risk with Dynamic Disk Converter (demo).
I found this:
“The problem is whether Windows Vista/2008 and Windows 7 can be installed on dynamic disk or not. In order to guarantee data’s security, their installation program dose not allow operating system is installed on dynamic disk. But, with exception, OS can be installed on the dynamic system volume. For example, first install a Vista to a basic disk, and then change the basic to dynamic disk, and on the dynamic disk you can directly install a OS (such as Windows 7 etc.)”
Another question: the 4 dynamic partitions that i have on a single disk will be one when i trying to install on it Windows?
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Crikey….
The problem I had was that the OS (Win7), was on a Dynamic Disk, which I now deem to be an invention of the devil himself! You seem to have gone this route…. Oh dear is all I can say.
But it’s windows itself that makes the disk dynamic. If you remove windows you can do what you like with it. I think that if you resize the volumes, you can install different OSs into the available space. But to me, though, this seems to be inviting boot manager hell as everything in this area isn’t clear cut. Each OS seems to have it’s own preferences and they all want their own boot loader to take over.
I’ve tried boot managers in the past, and have never been absolutely satisfied. I always go back to…
KEEP IT SIMPLE!!!
You also seem to be using Windows Virtual PC. I tried that, and it’s a bit of a hog. Sun’s VirtualBox is a much better virtualisation tool IMHO and virtually any OS can be installed within it. Microsoft’s Virtual PC is a windows only solution, Win7 top end versions only, I think, and you need specific processor extensions to get it to work. Sun’s VirtualBox does not need such high end processors, but obviously will use the power if given it. (There are a few check box settings for AMD-V, IO APIC etc). For Microsoft, I’m pretty sure that you can have only one installation of XPMode within the Virtual PC. It crashed my system when I tried two concurrently. VirtualBox from Sun – well, I’ve had 5 hosted OSs running concurrently AND Microsoft’s XPMode in Virtual PC! You have to start Virtual PC BEFORE VirtualBox as Microsoft sucks all the cycles out and needs heaps of hooks to be available for it’s own use to be able to work. VirtualBox will make do with whatever is available! Now that’s what I call a good program!
I’ve now removed Virtual PC from my machine because of all of this and just use Sun VirtualBox.
However, both Virtualisation methods are similar in that the hosted OS is stored as a big file (or two) within the hosting OS’s file system. I haven’t checked out how much registry info is also needed to get them working. But art the end of the day, a file is a file.
Please explain your remaining questions again, could you, because I’m unclear about what you are trying to do.
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The question is simple:
Can i install windows later on it? or it will give this error:
http://www.dynamic-disk.com/img/install-to-dynamic/install-windows7.gif
I know that Virtual PC sucks. I heard about VirtualBox but i forgot about it.
Dynamic Disk Converter let me to converter freely no? But i dont want to risk with it. (i just opened the program but it didnt request me to enter a password)
Thx for helping!
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http://www.dynamic-disk.com/img/install-to-dynamic/install-windows7.gif
This problem occurs only when i trying to install Windows 7 on a dynamic partition that has an installed Windows XP
I hopping that this is true:
“The problem is whether Windows Vista/2008 and Windows 7 can be installed on dynamic disk or not. In order to guarantee data’s security, their installation program dose not allow operating system is installed on dynamic disk. But, with exception, OS can be installed on the dynamic system volume. For example, first install a Vista to a basic disk, and then change the basic to dynamic disk, and on the dynamic disk you can directly install a OS (such as Windows 7 etc.)”
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* This problem occurs only when i trying to install Windows 7 on a dynamic partition that has an installed Windows XP? (this is a question sry :D)
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And i know why Virtual PC converted my disk in dynamic. When i checked how many free space i have on the virtual drive it shows me ~128gb, the total space of all of my 4 partition. So it unites the free space of all partitions and this is why it converts himself to dynamic :( SUCKY CRAP M$ solution
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Hi CuLLi
As you know I try to stay away from dynamic discs now…!
I think your screendump is showing the same problem that I got in virtually ALL disc management programs. That is, the disc doesn’t “exist” for the program. This is the reason to stick with “normal” discs, for me.
The inbuilt M$ disc management program will resize partitions and volumes but not merge data. A program like Acronis will do this, but only on “normal” discs. This is what I’ve found.
I’m still confused about what you are trying to do. Are you trying to make a dynamic disc WITHIN an XP installation inside Virtual PC?
Or is it that you want to upgrade XP that’s already on a dynamic disc? Or are you installing an OS into spare space on a dynamic disc?
My advice, from all the info you’ve given me is to get all your data off the disc onto a spare one. If you haven’t one, get one. Then do a nice clean install and don’t muck around with dynamic discs. Just stick with standard partitions.
The only reason to use dynamic discs is to use every bit of disc space available. This was fine when discs were <10Gb etc and you may have had 4 of them, but now, terabyte discs are cheap and there's no reason to skimp on space.
It's a bit like poor man's RAID, because if one disc fails, the WHOLE volume goes caput!!! (If you've spanned a volume across multiple discs)
Now, I don't even use RAID because the discs rebuilds are dependant on the actual RAID hardware. What if that goes wrong? All data lost just same in that scenario.
For me the best way to protect data is to have a proper copy.
On a separate disc.
In a different machine or hot-pluggable, as I have now, so that there is no permanent electrical connection between the data and it's backup...
Then put the OS on a nice standard partition.
.-= Strangely´s last blog ..Lookalikes =-.
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Hi CuLLi, do you want to install a Windows7 into your dynamic disk with 4 partitions? Although you have a XP on the dynamic disk, but Windows installer is still not let you use Win7 to replace XP, or install Win7 to other partitions on the dynamic disk. The installer allow Win7 is installed to the disk unless a Vista or Win7 has been installed on the disk rather than XP.
1. Suggest you connect a new harddisk as a basic disk to your computer for installing Win7, then copy the data on old disk to the new disk.
2. Use 3td party utility to convert to basic disk.
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I uninstalled Virtual PC, i dont care now about virtual sh*ts!
I have a single 1TB disk with 4 partitions. (C:,D:,E:,F:). On C: i have Windows 7. I dont want to upgrade to Windows XP or to create/resize/delete partitions.(only format C: when install new OS)
I just want to install a new Windows 7 in case when my current windows will be f*cked up. But i dont know if it let me install on the dynamic partition (C:) the newer windows.
U still dont understand? I cant explain more simple like this and sorry for my english :)
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@CuLLi
I understand now.
It won’t let you do that, in my experience. The thing is that the whole disc goes dynamic, not just a partition, and windows manages it. Also, windows likes to install it’s own OSs in the order that they came out from M$ (although you are not doing a retrograde install, I thought I’d mention this). If you manage to get a “spare” OS onto the remaining space, it’ll be dead if the original one goes dead anyway because of the way Windows manages the dynamic disc…
So if you need a backup, make a proper backup. Make a new image for quick replacement, if you like.
If you want to install Windows ON TOP of a dead one on your C: drive, I’ve a very strong suspicion that it won’t see any of your partitions because of the dynamic disc nature of volumes. So I think you’ll lose anything on your disc. This is why I call it an invention of the devil! (I haven’t personal experience of this – it’s just what I’ve read etc)
The other problem is the kind of stuff you’ll have on D:,E:,F: If it’s programs there will be a host of registry entries all referencing the C: drive. Your backup Windows (on G:, say) won’t have any pointers to any data on the D:,E:,F: drives! So it will be all alone, hardly knowing any of the programs around.
Go with ddlin’s suggestion and get a new spare hard-drive. You could image the whole drive to this, if you wanted, which would be a quick restore solution, although the actual imaging/backup process takes ages with huge discs nowadays.
If you don’t have the physical space for a new disc in your machine, an eSATA external drive will connect just as fast.
If you are really into trashing your system because of things that you may do, why not install Win7 as a virtual OS into VirtualBox? This way, do all your experimenting within the sandbox environment of VirtualBox, and if your virtual Win7 goes caput, just roll the whole thing back. It’s an idea, because you don’t seem very confident about the reliability of your Win7 install…. For me, I’ve been using the full RTM 64-bit ultimate version since the first week of August when the code was fixed, and it’s been rock solid for myself, despite all the ways I’ve tried to break it! ;-)
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You don’t format C: drive, because after formating, the installer may not allow you install the new Windows 7 to a formatted dynamic partition (C:). I think that it isn’t good choce to install system partition to a dynamic disk.
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“But, with exception, OS can be installed on the dynamic system volume. For example, first install a Vista to a basic disk, and then change the basic to dynamic disk, and on the dynamic disk you can directly install a OS (such as Windows 7 etc.)”
I found this on Dynamic Disk Converter page. Its the same case that i have with the exception that i have Seven instead of Vista.
Later i will try to run the Windows 7 install, and i will see if it let me to chose C; when it requests me to
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Later i will try to run the Windows 7 install, and i will see if it let me to chose C: when it requests me where to install…. (of course i dont will change my current windows)
(i clicked on Submit accidentally)
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“But, with exception, OS can be installed on the dynamic system volume. For example, first install a Vista to a basic disk, and then change the basic to dynamic disk, and on the dynamic disk you can directly install a OS (such as Windows 7 etc.)”
Or this refers only to upgrading to Seven from Vista? :(
Should i try Dynamic Disk Converter? But its not risky? And the demo version will do this? (i opened the program and didn’t request to me to buy etc. i think its free for personal use)
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culli,
probably you should try to the dynamic disk converter, i saw its site i think it should be no risk, but not free. you could need to contact its support.
windows 7 home doesn’t support dynamic disk, is your seven home edition?
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Aha! So only Windows 7 home edition doesnt support dynamic disk? Then ok.. i use Profesional(pirate edition >:) )
I launched yesterday the Windows 7 install inside my current windows (from iso, not from boot cd because i) and when i selected drive: C it didnt say that i cant install there because its dynamic so its OK. I will not risk to convert it if i cant install OS on it.
But now i have an another problem. I cant boot cd from DVD-ROM. I have DVD-ROM as first boot device but nothing. My reader only reads 3 seconds the dvd then stops while in POST its say Booting from CD… My DVD-ROM is faulty or because dynamic HDD? :( (in Windows DVD-ROM works well)
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Hi
The first paragraph in my original posting says that dynamic discs are “high-end Windows specific (i.e not home, basic etc)”. So yes, you need the higher licence – the discs are physically identical.
You’ve also answered your own question about trying to install onto a dynamic disc with your second point as well!! ;-)
As for your other problem. My guess is that your disc has a corrupt boot file or that it’s a bit damaged or that the drive head needs cleaning. For booting, each “bit” has to be spot-on, so files that can be normally read okay with a drive, aren’t actually so when it comes to the boot process.
I suggest making another disc (coaster time folks!)
The dynamic drive won’t affect it. In fact, it’ll probably prompt you to write a whole new install to the whole drive if it can’t find a valid windows installation already extant.
On a broader issue, if you use pirate software then you’ll undoubtedly get weird problems. Trying to get help with such problems is somewhat hypocritical as well. Now, because Microsoft are so keen to get everyone onto Win7 following the Vista fiasco that they’re virtually giving it away, there’s no reason to use dodgy stuff which is frequently trojan loaded anyway (I had a copy of Melodyne and Ableton Live given to me that were affected in this way). If you want to do stuff for testing or to satisfy yourself the best way to set up your system, it’s perfectly and legally possible to use Win7 for 120 days. Microsoft document it as do a host of news sites. This link will give you some decent pointers.
Also, there are a host of fully functioning free OSs out there. I have Mandriva, Ubuntu, Suse and Fedora on mine. They all work multimedia out of the box. Browse the web, print and make ISOs with no effort at all. Games are different, butb getting there.
http://windowssecrets.com/comp/091112/
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DDC is free for personal use. I opened it few times and it didnt request me to buy…….
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I think you’ll find that DDC is like all these disc programs, such as Paragon, Acronis etc.
They all let you set up a whole sequence of wanted operations, and then you hit a big “Action” type button to make it all happen.
It’s at this point that you’ll get a prompt that it’s a demo/trial copy. Normally, the program will exit into a DOS type screen and churn away for hours while it does it’s stuff…. I usually leave it for an overnight session e.g. a full disc image of my drive took 18 hours! Yes, 18!!! The bigger the discs get, the longer this process, which used to be a simple thing, now takes.
I can’t say that DDC will take this long. But using the free HxD to reset my disc to basic took all of 1 minute, once I’d backed up all my data, that is (see above point about the 18 hours…)
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HxD is not 100% save no? Where to backup 1TB data? i have only a 120GB HDD from my older PC.
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HxD worked fine for me and some others who’ve said so above.
If you really have 1TB of data then you need to get somewhere to back it up. Otherwise, it’s not worth having the data as it can disappear at any moment. Hard drives fail, remember. I’ve had two go in the last 10 years! The servers at my work replace one a fortnight, on average.
If you don’t value your data, then don’t back it up and don’t worry about it. If you value the data, buy another 1TB disc – or two!
It’s the old question “How much can you afford to lose?”
On the other hand, maybe your disc isn’t really full of 1TB of data? Maybe it’s just the files from your 120Gb drive which will be 120Gb absolute maximum?
Find out exactly what space is being used – sometimes the OS reports wrongly, especially if you have been compromised and the “Alternate Data Streams” have been used in the NTFS by some malware. This can really soak up space and give misleading space values.
If you have any issues like this, this is what I’ve done in the past.
Format a drive using FAT. It’ll be really inefficient, but it works.
Cut/Copy ALL your needed data files to the new drive. Drag and drop will do.
You’ll find that all the windows NTFS stuff like file ownership and permissions are wiped, as well as other possibly malware NTFS AD Streams.
Then copy all the files back to where you need them. YOu need to delete the old files first. This only works with data files. System files will suffer.
It’s a good trick if you ever get bad malware with rootkits and the like. Basically, they don’t work on a FAT filesystem. Then, you make a new clean OS install and copy your data to where it’s needed. The difference in disc space can be quite noticeable.
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hi! i just wanted to say HUGE thanks, you just saved my hp laptop hdd from full formatting. this hex way is simple and awesome, i’ll this article with friends.
thanks, -max
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I think that makes it 4:1 in favour of Hex editing with HxD over the commercial DDC!
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im just amazed how simple is solution :)
too bad i didnt know this year ago, when i formatted my 320gb drive
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You’re right! I was pretty scared before I started (hence the laborious backups etc), but in actual fact, it IS so easy, and is a no-brainer as long as you’re careful and precise.
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[...] I just have to put this link here – http://strangelyperfect.tv/6415/how-to-convert-a-dynamic-disk-to-basic-disk-in-windows-7/ [...]
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THANK YOU!!! after the partitioning gone wrong I thought I had offically done it this time and bricked yet another hd. Alas I find this simple and easy little way around when everybody else says I was screwed!! so THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! changing just three little 42′s to 07′s and voila! this laptop is the bane of my existence, but it has survived a tumble down an entire flight of stairs among other catastrophes haha!
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Tee-hee.
Glad to help – so spread the word.
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Is it possible to have “noob”-version from these instructions? I managed to convert my hdd to dynamic disk from basic disk on my new Acer-computer/Windows 7. Here is a snapshot fro my system http://img143.imageshack.us/i/disks.jpg/. Disk 0 is the new hdd and in (C:) there is the windows 7, (E:) and (F:) are just empty space so far. Disk 1 is the old hdd which is connected to usb-port and I can have empty space from there if needed.
I’m just bit lost with these instructions. So basically I need to take image from (C:) and put it on a disk 1 for safe-keeping? Will I also do a windows repair disk and put it on disk 1? Then I just delete all the volumes in the disk 0? Including 13,67 Gb and 1 Mt sized parts (which don’t have names) in the beginning and that SYSTEM RESERVED 100 Mt part?
After that I somehow move the (C:)-image from disk 1 to disk 0 to (C:) if it still is there in disk 0? Then I use the HxD to do what mentioned above, reboot and everything should be fine?
I’ve tried Disk Partition Software Demo version, but it said that (D:) and some nameless part couldn’t be converted back to basic disk with that program and it should be done with metheod 1&2. So there isn’t any help from that program?
Thank u very much in advance!
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Ok, so I managed to convert dynamic disk back to basic disk with these instructions so I think it is now 5:1 in favour of hex editing. Big thanks! I used freeware called Ptedit32 which, if possible, is even more simple to use than HxD.
But now I have runned to a bit of problem. After conversion I have over 600 Gb unused space on my disk and I can’t do anything with that space. In previous message there was a snapshot from my disk management before the conversion. The (E:)-drive got me to a problem in a first place when I was trying to make it and I accidentally converted my disk to dynamic disk.
Here is a snapshot from my disk management after the conversion http://i42.tinypic.com/30hnckn.jpg/. It shows the unused space and that I have some 1 Mb partition on my disk. I’m not sure if this were there originally or did Windows make it in conversion to dynamic disk. Is this small partition keeping me from creating a new drive to the disk? Should I remove this? I’ve looked it up from disk management but it doesn’t give any options to do anything to that partition (same thing with that 13,6 Gb partition which is somekind of hidden Acer made back-up partition?).
So if someone has a good idea what to do so I could get the unused space back to use, I will be more than happy! But thanks for the help so far!
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@Terryyy
This is the Ptedit32 download link on the Symantec website: ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/tools/pq/utilities/
You should be able to expand the C: drive into the 681Gb of unused space using windows’ own disk management. Right-click on the C: drive will show the “Extend volume” option for you.
You can’t do this for the 1Mb or 13.6Gb bits though, even after you remove the partition with the “Delete Volume…” right-click option. You’ll need a third party disc tool to do this. There are heaps of free and paid-for ones that will do the trick.
The 1Mb is made during the dynamic disk creation process and is a database….
If you are managing your own backups and the BIOS is a standard on-chip one, you can delete the Acer 16Gb partition. Acer utilities use it for backup and/or a default restore file source for all their included software when you bought the machine (Sometimes backup is on a separate drive or even HALF the main single drive). I’ve seen various types over the years and my daughter’s had one example like yours, which I safely removed when I did a clean Win7 install for her. I recently did the mother-in-law’s with a Win7 upgrade from Vista, but in this case I left the Acer partition as it was, but removed all their software which slowed everything up as it mapped every file creation and change to the backup… Triple Zeds for disc access speeds there! zzz
Hope this helps. I’ve re-read my article and agree that it needs a nice clean re-write for improved clarity. But it’s finding the time, innit? !!
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Hello Strangely. I don’t understand these instructions :S I’m a noob and maybe a little incompetent :p Anywho I turned my disk (disk0) into a dynamic disaster!!! I Screwed up my recovery partition and my hp tools partition so I deleted them with disk management so now my disk looks like this:
http://i168.photobucket.com/albums/u173/bonelessmetal/diskmanage.jpg
Please tell me what steps I need to take (using the hex tool thing)to make my disk simple again!
NOTE:I just bought this laptop, I’m broke and I dont have a way of backing anything…
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You should be able to get the HP tools etc from the HP website, I’d have thought. It’ll be a standard support type of download.
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Do I change all 4 “42′s” into “07′s”? snapshot: http://i168.photobucket.com/albums/u173/bonelessmetal/doichangeall442sinto07s.jpg
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@Eric Dv6
Sorry it’s not clear. I really need to re-write this topic…
But yes. You have four 42s so change them all to make the partitions visible and standard. You can roll back if you are doing this from a boot-disk, so perhaps you should ensure that you can boot from an external source to play with the hard disc using the tools if you need to do this.
My experience is that it’s really easy. It’s just the 42s in column 02 JUST ON THE FOUR LINES HIGHLIGHTED.
My guess is that your HP partitions etc will suddenly become active again…!
Keep me informed please of your progress.
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To re-iterate…
Change the four 42s to 07 and you’ll then see four partitions.
Then, if you use windows’ or any other disc management tool and delete partitions (as I did), you’ll see that the deleted partitions are now listed as 00 and your live partitions are 07 if you look at them with the HxD tool.
This gives a clue as to the method to recover deleted partitions! ;-)
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Dear All, Thanks for this nice post, unfortunately I don’t really get it. I think you guys did this experiment on a destop pc and I have a laptop, Infact two. So I have dynamic disk on 1 of them and can’t change it, trying since the last 3 days. Anyone there who can help me solve it. I will be very grateful.
Regards
Jalil
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Hi Strangely, I looked at this post but unfortunately I didn’t get it. right now I have a two laptops, one of them having dynamic disks, and an 8 GB USB. and the laptop that has dynamic disks doesn’t contain any data so how could I convert it back to basic disk. I will be very grateful if you kindly guide me on this.
Regards
Jalil
***************
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Jalil.
There is no real difference between a desktop PC and a laptop. Only the componentry and some of the connectivity is different – the actual guts of the machines, their components and the OSs are identical e.g. hard drives, screens, keyboards etc.
Since the laptop has no data (but an operating system (OS), I assume), you can proceed in two ways.
After you have your disks/partitions back to normal you can do any further changes using the inbuilt or other disc management programs to get them how you want.
Good luck! I actually found the process easier to do than describe!
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Hey Dear,
Thank you so much for this great post, I just did it, I changed the disk to basic within 5 seconds by changing 42s to 07s, Thats so nice of you man……….Thats appreciative, Thanks man.
Regards
Jalil
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Wahay Jalil!
I think everyone, like me, is a bit daunted by the apparent complexity of the process. But as you’ve found, it’s quick and easy in the end – just be careful to edit EXACTLY the right bit, that’s all!
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Ya thats a big help man, The good thing about this post is that there is not so many posts about this problem, when you search for it, Its only dynamic disk’s website, your post and Microsoft’s simple directions which doesn’t really help. So its great……By the way will you have time to screen record it and post it up, Its going to make it even easier.
Thanks
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I’d love to do a better version of the post and screen record the process, but unfortunately my time is limited. Also, I’m now of the opinion that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! So you’ll have to wait until I go mad again and then have to undo the madness… ;-)
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I think you’ll find that DDC is like all these disc programs, such as Paragon, Acronis etc.
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On the contrary – I found that the DDC was better than Paragon & Acronis. As I said, all disc options disappear in these programs and the whole disc just appears as a pale yellow blob with no separation between any volumes.
Best of all, was HxD – it was free, and easy, once the fear factor has left you!
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Why didnt you simply copy the contents to another disk, then simply use Disk management in Windows to remove the rartition and then in one click Windows converts it back to basic?
Then copy your system back?
I was also under the impression that the primary / Boot disk could not be made into a dynamic disk.
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This shows the option to make a dynamic disk on my system drive this morning. So your impression is wrong! I did it, and what a twit I was for doing it.
Because of this, simply copying isn’t an option. Apart from the time factor (it’d already taken 18 hours to do a backup), I already had my core data backed up and you can’t copy the whole disk as it just makes another dynamic disk. If you copy partitions, it doesn’t work either. I tried.
I was prepared to do a full re-install, but then, it’s the time. Anyone who has ever done this knows that you can easily kiss goodbye to a weekend getting windows and all your applications re-installed, let alone getting all the user files back in place….
the best thing, if you don’t believe me, is to do it to your own system and then try and recovering using your suggested method. You’ll then understand what a pickle the whole dynamic disk thing is! AS I said at the top, don’t dance with the devil.
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Hi,
Thanks for this simple guide in converting dynamic to basic disk. I don’t have any experienced in editing this kind of stuff. I don’t even know HxD Editor since I’m a noob when it comes to this. But just following this easy steps save me $25 and gives me total relief. Two thumbs up for you man. I owe you a lot for saving my files. Cheers! ;)
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Yeah. It’s not too hard once you actually do it. It’s just the “scare factor” about twiddling with the basic setup of the OS on the disc…..
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Hi,
I love this guide because it is easy and hassle-free. But the thing is, it won’t work with Windows 7. I’ve got Dynamic disk (with 4 volumes in it), and yea, wants to change it to Basic with no data loss.
I’ve tried using Dynamic Disk Converter Professional Demo Edition (just to check) to change the disk back to Basic, but DDC gave me warning that one of the volume will be lost. And that’s the most important volume (actually, all are important). The warning says that I’ve done a RAID on my disk, which I haven’t.
Is there any other way to convert the disk back to basic without data loss?
Regards,
Frank
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@Frank
It was Windows 7 Ultimate that I did the fix on! HxD worked perfectly for me, so there’s something odd going on with the RAID mesage you’ve got. Is it possible that you’ve got a mainboard setting in the BIOS set to RAID or similar yet the disk(s) is just a single disk? There are some quite confusing RAID/SATA/IDE type settings that I’ve found aren’t at all intuitive with the current crop of mainboards.
Have a twiddle and see if you can get the RAID message to dissappear and then you may get DDC (or HxD) to work. As long as you haven’t set the onboard RAID active, it’s possible that it’s sending conflicting messages to the OS.
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I’m not a newbie, and I guess I could have done the registry changes suggested. But I would have needed/wanted to do a full backup first, and that would have been impractical, since Windows Backup doesn’t back up everything, and the backup program I’d already paid for (Acronis True Image Home 2010) doesn’t do dynamic disks. So I bit the bullet and bought Dynamic Disk Converter, which worked perfectly. It’s a program I’ll only use once, but it was worth it.
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I thought that DDC would be OK, but I went the HxD route! Well done.
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@Doug
They’re not Registry changes….. You actually edit core bits of data that tell the Operating System what partitions are set up on the hard drive. It’s on a special bit of the hard drive, and goes right back to the very basics of personal computing and hard drives.
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Hah, you have shared so much, how I can wait, here, share something related about convert dynamic disk to basic disk in windows7. Hope we can share the information together.
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Interesting message, this one….
Atest is his name.
Atest is his game.
But what’s it about?
Well. The IP address is 220.248.143.189 and a WHOIS on this pops up an address in China! See http://whois.domaintools.com/220.248.143.189
The link to Dynamic Disk Converter (DDC), is valid, so I decided to find out EXACTLY who this fine company are…
On their “About” page, we find that the company is Aomei Technology. However….
Doing a WHOIS on BOTH DDC and Aomei Technology come up with their name being hidden behind their registrar in Pittsburg, pairNIC.com Try http://whois.domaintools.com/dynamic-disk.com for instance.
So you have to ask yourself;
And;
You then have to ask yourself, (bearing in mind that a company that makes software to modify your crucial disk drive’s setup could also add any old code they like to the software… think rootkit);
For me, I’ll stick with HxD (although other Hex Editors would have equally well have done the job). My thoughts on spammers and the malware that they invariably deliver are well described on this website!
And I don’t want to find out at a later date that I’ve delivered something nasty into my system.
On the other hand;
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Hi,
This looks easy enough…however, my situation doesn’t seem to match up exactly, and so I have a question.
One of my drives that accidentally got converted to dynamic has 2 partitions on it (F, I). I run HxD, and open the correct disk, and there is only ONE 42 in that area of the sector, not two as I was expecting (one for each partition).
If I convert this one and only 42 to 07, will I still have both of my partitions, and will my data on both partitions still be intact?
Thanks,
fb
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@Fabio
My knowledge is limited to using the tool as I outlined. However, saying that, it looks like it’s an extended partition…is this so?
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@Fabio
I’ve just run a test and created then deleted two volumes (partitions) in a logical drive area.
As I suspected, the logical (or maybe it’s called Extended) volume just shows once in HxD.
So I suspect that your I drive is probably a logical drive, somehow!
So……………………………………………
This shows my computer after adding two LOGICAL drives into the space next to my G drive.
This can be seen in the highlighted area of the screen-shot below. The “07″‘s are in column 02.
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@Strangely:
Thanks for the efforts. Unless I’m missing something, I don’t see any change between the time you had the extended partition in place, and wiped it….looks identical to me.
fb
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Fabio.
That’s my point! I still have my G drive (which has important stuff in it) in place, yet all the time, only 3 “07″s show!! I made 2 partitions and they didn’t show up!
So my suggestion, although you haven’t confirmed it, is that (probably) all your drives are on an extended or logical partition. How it manages to boot up, I’m not sure.
Now whether or not turning the “42″ into a “07″ will work for you, or if you’ll lose one or both partitions and all the data, I can’t say.
When I did my fix, I laboriously copied all data files to a separate drive before doing so. I think you should do the same.
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Thanks again.
The drive in question is not a boot drive at all…purely data.
I think, as you stated, the safest route is to copy the data out, and then try….I will do so and post back with some pictures to let you know how it turned out. Once again, thanks for your efforts!
fb
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I think in that case, that you’ve made an extended or logical partition with two partitions inside it. So back up you data then try setting then 42 to 07. It should work, but if not, you’ve the backup!
I’d be pleased to see the pix and put them in the site post. However, only I as admin can post images to the site so you’ll have to use a link to an external server.
Good luck!
Rees
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First of all, thanks for your post. After I accidentally converted my disk to dynamic lots of googling indicated that the only way back is to format and convert, then after some more searching I stumbled upon HxD, and found myself here. Despite your concerns I went with the Dynamic Disk Converter option, which worked perfectly.
Once again, thanks :)
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Ok Jack. Thanks for the feedback about DCC and I’m glad it worked. I do get phases of sometimes justified, rampant paranoia…!
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Just wanted to say THANK YOU SO MUCH!
Here’s my situation. Trying to make a Hackintosh I resized my 2nd logical partition (I have a C: and a D:) and made a raw partition of 40 GB. Then Windows threw up a little “Yo dumbass, wanna fuck up your computer by making the drives dynamic?” and I stupidly clicked yes.
So I was afraid to restart or anything. Did nothing but use HxD, edit the “42″s I found to be “07″s, save and restart. It worked. Now I just have to remap my drive, which used to be D:, back to D:. Windows changed it to E: for some reason.
Thanks so freakin much!!!
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You’ll probably find that you have a sliver of a 1Mb area left over in disc management. I think this may be something to do with Windows tripping up and making the D: into an E: drive.
Glad it worked – as it did for me!
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I, as others have done, clicked ‘yes’ when trying to set up a RAID drive. Now my C: (OS) and E: (Recovery) drives are dynamic. Both are located on the same physical drive. I do have a secondary drive D: By resetting the ’42′ to ’07′ on the dynamic drives, will I lose all data, definitely or possibly. Must the drive be reformatted? Thanks
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I would say it’s pretty certain that you won’t lose data. I did exactly what it said above, in my post above, and it restarted and worked just perfectly, no data lost.
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@Christopher
All the information I have is that everyone (including myself) who has done the process, has had no problem whatsoever. For me, all my data was okay, although I did back up before I twiddled the 42s to 07s.
Reformatting? You will need to if the drive loses data! It’s a full re-install of all your OS, programs and data… hence the standard advice about backing up, anything you can’t afford to lose.
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