I'm kinda caught by this weird problems of drives reverting to Dynamic disks.
I suspect it could be the use of SATA hard drive. Possibly the SATA RAID driver bugs or operating system bugs which a "new drive" (if not recognized) will be converted to dynamic disk setup (this is similar to NRAID configuration).
For those who did not encounter this problem yet, I suggest not to install any SATA RAID drivers but just the normal SATA drivers instead (most manufacturers have 2 driver versions - one for RAID and the other for non-RAID setup).
Another thing to watch out for is disk spanning (used for dynamic disk setups) also... If you are not using it, then disable this.
So far I had 6 external USB HDDs (and all Seagates inside) and none of them had exhibit these kind of problems.
Anyway.. WHAT brand and model is that external HDD case?
There is a data recovery service in Low Yat though, on the 3rd floor. Its called SCS-Myung. I suggest you ask for pricing first before trying it.. it may be quite expensive.
Reference: http://www.scs-myung.com/
Anyway would like to ask a few questions here:
Which WinXP operating system are you using?
1. Home Edition
2. Pro Edition
3. Corporate Edition
What Serive Pack are you using?
1. No Service Pack installed
2. Pre-Installed SP1 (comes with the WinXP)
3. Updated to SP1
4. Updated to SP2
Did you intsall any drive utilities such as Norton Utilities?
Did you install any drive auto-defragment utilities like "Disk Keeper"?
Can you list down your detailed full PC hardware specifications?
For research.. need to know if there are similarities in these cases.
This post has been edited by lex: Feb 12 2006, 06:31 PM
Disk Partition Recovery, When BASIC becomes DYNAMIC suddenly