Dear SycHo_SNaiL,

Sorry to hear about your problems.

Well, after much effort, I was finally able to fix my disk problem (see previous posts for details). However, I did get some help from this website:

An Examination of the Windows 2000 ( NT5.0 ) and Windows XP ( NT5.1 )
MBR ( Master Boot Record )

http://thestarman.narod****/asm/mbr/Win2kmbr.htm

I highly recommend anyone facing these problems to check it out before running utilities!

I think that since I attempted to run the dmpss utility without really understanding what the heck I was doing, I might have messed up the MBR further.

After much back and forth on the issue, I finally purchased the utility:

GetDataBack - Data Recovery for NTFS V2.25
$79 from http://www****ntime.org

and was able to view and copy out all the files from the drive. Then I reformatted the drive, and so far it's working fine.

It's hardly a "solution", more a work around, but after spending precious months on the issue, it was worth the $79.

The only other thing I can recommend is that if you know what caused the problem in the first place (mine was a Windows Update automatic driver upgrade - wrong driver!), you can avoid it in the future.

Good luck,

Heather

I had the same problems with 120 GB Dynamic disk that suddenly became "corrupted". What i think caused the problem is the firewire/usb2 caddy that i had it in. Its since started corrupting basic disks as well but usually Chkdisk can fix these problems. its since been returned to the manufacturer.

I tried everything listed in this forum thread. I even called MS as we have a support agreement at work and they couldnt help me. Strange but they didnt know about the tool dmpss.exe listed above?! I even read somewhere else that you can sometimes use ghost on corrupt dynamic disks to write an image and then write this image back to a basic disk.

I thought i found a tool that could help called r-studio. It appeared to recover about half the drive and i was almost resigned to the fact that this was about all i could salvage. Unfortunatly as i examined the data i realised that most of it was corrupt.

I thought i'd have one more search on the web and i found myself back at his forum. I saw Heather's post and I purchsed GetDataBack - Data Recovery for NTFS V2.25. I wasn't expecting much but what do you know? I RECOVERED ALL THE DATA!!!

I am very happy to say the least!

BTW, i even deleted the header from this drive witht he MS tool and GetDataBack - Data Recovery for NTFS V2.25 was able to recover the lot.

Also, GetDataBack took about 4 hours to find all the data and about 3 hours to copy it of the dynamic disk to a basic disk.

Well I have got myself a copy of GetDataBack NTFS v2.25 so will give that a try. Going to continue trying to figure out how to get the disks working with a new disk group though as I do not really feel like recovering 160Gig's of data. This is a problem that Microsoft should sort out though as not every one should be happy spending money to get data back that is actually still there. Anyway thanks for the links HFloyd it's quite a bit of reading but will get through it. I will continue checking back here to see if anyone else has any more useful information regarding this problem.

Dear alanant and SycHo_SNaiL,

Glad to be of some help. I was relieved at how easy the GetDataBack program was to use. Of course, I doubt MS will acknowledge it as a problem, because then they'd actually have to address it!

Also, I know the link I gave has some very heavy reading, and it's not very "web-friendly" reading, but if you have any questions about it, I found the author, Daniel, to be very helpful via email.

Good luck to you in your disk problems!

Heather

The Advices of Microsoft and Julian Voelcker (see here) didn't work for me. Still it says "No valid configuration copies".
I used the dmdiag.exe to get the last diskid:

Excerpt of the DMDiag Report:
Then i set the old diskid like this
"dmpss repairconfig 1" also didn't work, it said "no corrupt data detected".

I'm running W2k SP4 and the disk is a single drive with only one partition.

I was able to rescue all the data using R-Studio. GetDataBack didn't even show any filenames.

About dynamic disks in general:
I think its a desaster that Microsoft regards dynamic disks an "upgrade". They also use this term in the Logical Disk Management. That's confusing because users who are not planning to use spanned volumes or RAID have no advantages over basic disks. quite the contrary dynamic disks require a healty Logical Disk Manager database in order to operate - this is a big drawback to reliability. They should call it "Coversion" not "Upgrade"!

In Addition to that if you install a new HDD to your Computer and open up disk management you get a popup window that prompts you to set a "digital signature" on that disk in order to create a dynamic volume. This way unexperienced users (as me at that time) who trust the default settings create dynamic disks and problems right away. i've never had such problems with basic disks!

I was sweating bullets, but thanks to this forum and GetDataBack, I was able to restore my drive.

Thanks a bunch.

PS. I'll never click blindly through the M$ wizards again!

Hello everybody,
hello Taz,
I have as many here the same problem that I can't import a foreign dynamic disk, which is a RAID 5. The RAID Controller Software has not problems with the RAID.
So could you please send me the DMPSS.EXE file. I want to give a try.

thanks alot.

I was able to access a corrupt Dynamic partition with this utility from Omnixray.
It displays a list of all partitions on the drive, and works under DOS.

http://www.omnixray.com/

Very good support too.

I woke up yesterday morning to find 4 out of 5 dynamic volumes missing after a system crash the night before. My system was built many years ago and I've been having trouble with my power supply. I rebooted with no effect. I swapped out my add-on IDE controller with no effect. I got so frustrated, I actually reinstalled W2K and ended up exactly where I started.

After some hair-pulling I ran across this thread. Thanks to etones for the detailed look at dmpss and the executable. I did run across some discrepancies. My version of dmdiag.exe does not have a "DMAdmin Verbose Query" section. I have moved my drives around since they were created so the disk IDs in the "Disk Config" section colud not be replied upon. Luckily, I did have one active dynamic volume.

Basically what I did was this:

I used dmpss to give me a view of all the dynamic headers (missing and active). I compared the information between the missing volumes and the active volume and determined the only difference, asside from the sequence number, time and disk data, was the disk set ID. The missing drives were on one ID, the active on another.

I then used dmpss to change the header of one of the missing drives to the active disk set ID and rebooted. Success!!!

I then changed the other three.

The only negative effects I have noticed were some volumes had multiple drive letters assigned, but that's an easy fix. I just wish I had found this thread a lot sooner.

My best advice would be to research the differences between the active and missing headers. If your disks have just disappeared, then there shouldn't be to many, and etones post is very informative. I'm including dmpss as an attachment (zip file). It also contains dmdiag, which can also be gotten from MS (free of charge for a change). I'll also try and help anyone with this problem, just reply.

~Aan 'Allein

Dear members far smarter than I. I have followed the information in all of the posts and it seems the dmpss is what I am after. I installed a 250gb HDD at the weekend as a backup for my main drive. All went well and so I transferred some data across. Again all went well so I dumped a whole heap of V.Important stuff on it. I rebooted later and hey presto the drives have all gone???

Device manager and Bios all register them but I get an error "dmboot: Failed to auto-import disk group Mpc-desktopDg0. All volumes in the disk group are not available." in systems log of disk manager.

So I downloded the dmpss untility, extracted it, double clicked and it flashed up a dos window and disapeared. Funnily enough the volumes did not majically appear. So I opened a dos window and did the same but no matter what syntax I use, I get the error "not recognised as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file." Can anyone help?????? Please.

I am running XP pro.

Thank you if you can.

Matt

Matt,

First, let me suggest you never use dynamic drives ever again. Windows still has not fixed this latent write problem and their are cheap hardware solutions that function much better (if you need RAID for mirroring or other kinds of disk groups.) Having said that,let's getyou back on the right path.

Your first problem is that windows dosen't know where you installed dmpss.exe to. Either add that folder to your path variable

(My Computer / Properties /Advanced / Environment variables / Path / Edit /add new path relative to root of disk letter folder stored on with semicolon after last statement in path file ex. ;D:\temp)

or install dmpss.exe to your system or system32 folder. This will allow windows to see the executable. Alternatively, you could prefix every dmpss.exe command to specify the current directory (./dmpss.exe ...). This will solve the error you keep seeing "not recognised as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file."

This was the easy part. Now comes the complex use of dmpss. You need to realize dmpss is a command line utility with many options. It is not designed to simply click your problems away. I suggest you reread the manual posted in this thread before you try any of those options.

The first thing you need to do is get a copy of the header from all your dynamic disks. You will use this header as a basis to find out what is causing the disks not to show up in windows as dynamic volumes. I have had this problem twice and onceI was ableto fix it using dmpss, once I was not and had to recover using 3rd party recovery software.

After you have the headers, look at them and compare what is the same and what is different. If you have a working dynamic disk, this is easier because the working volume will contain all the pertinant info. You're going to be comparing disk group names and IDs, bootsigs, and time indexes. See my previous post in case I forgot any. If you have a working dynamic volume, you want to change all this info on the volumes that aren't working to the one that is. But, only if the time index is newer on the working volume. Otherwise, windows is going to try and update the disk group from an older header and get confused, possibly causing any working dynamic drives to disappear with the same error. You change the header using one of the dmpss options. i suggest altering one drive at a time and then rebooting and seeing what the results are.

If you don't have any working volumes or your time code on the missing volumes is newer than any working volumes (a negative time index is considered newer than than a positive one), then good luck to you. This is the point where dmpsss failed for me. If you have the cash, give MS a call and have one of their techs work you through a solution. Otherwise, you're going to need another drive, as big as the largest drive you have that isn't working and some recovery software. I used getdataback for ntfs and it worked fine (approx $80). Just keep in mind, data recovery programs only work if your diskis correctly detected in the BIOS. You can tell by the code displayed after the drive manufacturer. If BIOS isn't detecting your drive correctly, try switching the drive to another PC. If that still dosen't work, your data is gone for good. If your drive is detected fine in BIOS, be prepared to wait quite a while to get your data back as the process is very time and CPU intensive.

Hope this helps and good luck.

Ken

Thanks to all members of forum for their invaluable suggestion.

I would also like to share my opinion about the data recovery software. Some time back I was not able to access my hard drive. I had lost all my partition and files on my drive. Then I googled and came across the Stellar Phoenix FAT & NTFS. This software not only recovered my lost files and folders but also recovered the lost partition.

I would suggest that try this software also. It’s very easy to use and one can download the demo version from the site http://www.stellarinfo.com/partition-recovery.htm. The demo version will show us the recovered data. If we are satisfied with the result then only we should proceed to buy the software

I know that this thread is old but for people looking for a possible fix try the following:

To test if this will fix the problem:
Try and run Disk Defrag (Start -> All Programs - > Accessories - > System Tools - > Disk Defrag), if it gets an error about not being able to open the program twice, then continue to the steps below.

1. Download and run Process Explorer (Windows Sysinternals: Documentation, downloads and additional resources)
2. In Process Explorer search for "defrag" and kill whatever processes are using the Defrag application.
3. Start Disk Defrag and run a Defrag
4. Restart Server.

This seems to fix the problem and the disk is a basic disk that can be converted to a dynamic disk again in Disk Management.
The defrag will take a long time as it is fixing the corrupt disk conversion.

Thanks and sorry this is so late again.