Dynamic Disk Invalid

Hi,
Had the same issue as many on this thread.
Had a 1TB drive installed along with a 500 GB Drive system was running Win XP.
Rebuild the PC removing the 1TB and installing windows 7.
Tried to add 1TB back into system and got the dynamic invalid error.
Used HxD and changed the 42 to 07 and worked perfectly.

Thanks,
mikekian

I have a WD7500AAKS internal hard drive that I've converted to an external USB drive via ATA/ATAPI Bridge. The disk was fine with Windows XP & Vista. Now, when I try opening it with Windows 7, I cannot. At max, I can make the disk offline/online or disable it. When I tried opening the disk with HxD, first of all, even though I unchecked the 'Readonly' option, when it tried to read the disk, the readonly option was automatically enabled and shaded out thus not letting me uncheck it. Once it opened the physical disk, there was no data in the Sector 0. I mean all the offsets have 0 as the value. The first instances of data are only in sector 16.
The hard disk does not even show up in 'My Computer' or in Disk Management's list (i.e the top part). So, there is an indication of the hard disk being present only in the bottom part and in device manager. When I go to the volume properties, there is no display either. And, when I try updating the driver, I always get a message that it is up to date.
I haven't converted the disk to 'Basic' or tried anything else.

Can someone please tell me what's wrong?

Thanks for the info Bdonk - the HxD solution worked for me too.
:-)

In awe of finding this article so quick! I too have registered to say THANK YOU!!!!

I'm transferring Rigs & decided to leave my OS/Prog Drive + Music drive in old rig for new owner (with some retwigging). Did the moves a week ago & noticed that my Tunes drive was not displaying.

Only tonight after watching Germany beat Argentina & wait for Spain to play Paraguay (Time stapms thsi comment lol) did I decided to investigate why.

When I discovered all the symptons reported in your original query/resolve I could not believe so easy. I too have Windies 7 (but Pro ed) & drive worked fine up until the removal of extra drives.

I wanted to make sure I had a backup of my data before I swap the SATAs out for PATAs (new owner - sis in law - is not techy savvy to notice & it's free for her). The cold sweats kicked in until I found this article & then when I edited the file I forgot to reboot & momentary freak.

One restart later & bang TUNES ARE BACK IN THE HOUSE!!! (duplicating this data asap lol)

Thanks again & thanks again

Originally Posted by bdonk

I've been using Windows 7 for a while now but all the sudden I'm having an issue with one of my Hard Drives. I have a 320gig SATA as my primary system drive, a 500gig SATA data drive (this one is set to 'dynamic') and then an 120gig ATA drive (That I currently have no data on yet.)

For a couple of months now all was fine. My primary drive was assigned the letter C: (durr,) the 500gig was set to G: and the ATA was set to D:.

I have all of my music and stuff on my big drive, the 'dynamic' one. So I turn on my computer and click a shortcut to my music on my desktop and I get a message saying the link has no target, so I open My Computer and lo and behold, G: is gone. I go to Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management and I see:

"Disk 0, (D) basic, healthy, primary partition"
"Disk 1, (C) basic, healthy, primary partition"
"Disk 2, (supposed to be G), dynamic, invalid"

When I right-click on it, I get the option to 'convert to basic disk' (lose all data on it,) or 'reactivate disk.' Selecting the latter option gives me the error "This operation is not allowed on the invalid disk pack."

Properties reports the device is working properly, my bios sees the drive as well...???
There is a tiny white bubble with a red down-facing arrow over the drive icon there too that's looking kind of bad...

Please help!

!!!FIXED!!!

I downloaded HxD, a disk hex editor and opened the disk in it. In sector 0, location 1C2, the value read "42." This means dynamic drive, so I changed the value to "07" and saved the changes and rebooted.

Upon reboot I went back to Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management and there it was, no longer 'invalid' but instead said 'healthy, NTFS, basic.' Glee!

I had to reboot again though for some reason because I was unable to change the drive's name (not path, just name) and also the drive was not appearing on the left in my library's window. After a 2nd reboot though it was back to the way it was and the disk is no longer dynamic.

I thought this was odd to begin with though because I used Windows7 to make that drive dynamic in the first place, so I have no idea as to why it would suddenly lose support for dynamic disks

Oh well, I'm happy.

For anybody that may be having the same issue, here's the link to the fix and the app: Convert Dynamic Disk back to Basic Disk without data loss - Wilders Security Forums

man..U R THE MAN!! i was afraid to do it, but i said lets do it! and it perfectly worked

thx mate.. cheers!

bdonk!! Thank You!! However, I wasn't savvy enough to figure out how to use HxD - I gave it a good 5 minutes of effort:-) But, your info. led me to use MBRTool (I use this all the time to modify/create/manipulate partitions). Changing 42 to 07 did the trick perfectly. If you want an easy way to find/use MBRTool just download and burn to disk the newest UBCD (Ultimate Boot CD). I'm sure you can find MBRTool on the net somewhere but I first found it on UBCD and it's been a very handy tool. Again, bdonk, thank you!!

I bought a new Dell studio XPS and have all my data from a previous computer stored on a 160GB HD. I obtained a USB 2.0 IDE Adaptor can can't locate the device on Explorer.

The problem is, HxD doesn't even detect the drive connected to the USB. But, the drive does show up when I go to Computer > Device Manager > Disk Drives . It also shows up under "Disk Management" but with the same problem as you...

Can anyone provide a bit more support for a complete novice?

Thanks in advance.

In disk management, right click on the bar graph for the drive and assign a drive letter to it.

I'm having the exact same problem as Inneedofsupport. Brand, spanking new Dell XPS with a IDE external enclosure. The HD comes up in disk manager, but is unable to assign any drive letter (at least with the right-click method). So I searched and found this other method to assign drive letters:

Can't assign drive letter for paritition

Click Start and in Search programs and files box type CMD
From top of Start menu under Programs (1) RIGHT-click CMD> Run as administrator
At the Command prompt (>) type Diskpart and press [ENTER]
Type List Disk [ENTER]
Type Select Disk N ( N = your Disk Number) [ENTER]
Type List Partition [ENTER]
Select Partition n (n=the partition you want) [ENTER] *This is when the process broke down for me*
Type Assign [ENTER]

Everything works fine until I try to select the partition on that disk. It says that 'this operation is not allowed on an invalid disk'.

Seems like I'm so close, but have just hit a wall. I'm still searching, but any further suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

aHello, I'm Another person who has just registered to say a massive THANKYOU to bdonk. You have just ended a coupla of weeks of frustration and avoided me losing 7 years worth of largely un-backed up photos and videos, and an insane CD-Collection which I would never have the heart or time to re-rip.. I'd make you a cup of tea if I knew where you were man - thanks!