Dynamic Disk(s)/Windows XP Dilemma

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davidnagel

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Howdy, my first post on this forum and its a biggun (for me anyway) hello to everyone, hope you are all well and had a good christmas and new year - I know I did! :D

Right... shall I start from the beginning?

Awhile ago, I bought two IDE 120gb Maxtor harddrives. I felt it sensible to make them into a RAID. Instead of the usual hardware RAID I like Windows create a RAID 5 arrangement and it stripped the file system across the two drives.

Then one day the second harddrive starting clicking, this was the harddrive that had my second partition on and also all the files I never backed up. I backed up what I could and then it died.

After some intense podding and poking I discovered that the PCB was in fact dead. I left it like this for a long while, continued to use the first drive's operating system till I decided it was best to leave this alone till I got a new PCB. So I continued with another harddrive, blah, blah

It wasn't until recently that I found a nice chap on ebay and he sent me a new PCB and the harddrive boots up fine. No clicking. No smell. No unusual noise.

Now, I started the machine up and noticed that the second harddrive strip thing was registered as Offline in the Disk Management. So I restarted assuming it might have needed to be provoked to work. This obviously didn't work and after some reading on Microsoft.com I discovered that I needed to right-click the Offline Dynamic Disk and click Reactivate.

Fine.

So I started up the computer again but this time the progress bar for Windows was going awfully slow, then it stopped, and reported that the file ISAPNP.SYS was corrupt or missing and suggested I load the Windows Recovery Console from my Windows CD and replace the file (backing up the original first of course)

So I set about doing this but only to discover that for some strange reason, the recovery console gave me the C: drive letter but didn't let me look at anything. So I pulled the operating system disk out and plugged it up in another system to have a look, sure enough, there wasn't anything on it.

I assume that because the partition is in fact a Dynamic Disk/Partition a non-dynamic (Basic) disk cannot look at the file system? With this in mind, I went and found loads of NTFS boot cds and Boot cds to see if I could read the filesystem to replace the file... but nothing. As far as everything else is concerned the disk doesn't exist.

But I know for a fact it exists because why else would it attempt to load an operating system at startup if there wasn't one?

Well, I'm sure you can see my dilemma. Is there anything I can do to replace this SYS file outside the recovery console which can't see the C drive either?

Any help is much appreciated.

If you need more details on the harddrives or software or anything please do not hesitate to ask. I've been waiting nearly a year to get this old data back online and finally backedup so do this silly old sod a favour at give me a few pointers! LOL!

All the best,

David
 
seems to be your problem really isn't a problem but something you have to deal with when you opt for using dynamic disks

because the data is divided alternately on the disks, they exist as a unit and not able to be seen or recognized on another system. It is specific to the computer you created it on.

Your options then would be, either from a service (app or tech) like:
Hard drives data recovery for NTFS dynamic disks in the Windows XP and Server 2000/2003.

OR - if you did everything in the following and that didn't help:
You receive a "Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: Isapnp.sys" error message at startup

you may want to revert to using basic disk:
How To Convert to Basic and Dynamic Disks in Windows XP Professional

:D
 
these are the problems you get when you use regular ide drives to run raid.

I tell you guys to never run raid because that make the drives half as reliable. if you insist on raid, get seagate scsi hdds. don't ever use windows raid. use hardware raid
 
Thanks for looking, chaps.

I have realised NOW that they aren't reliable. LOL!

Right, I've given the Data Recovery Wizard a looksee but it isn't producing the results that I'm after. I will see if there is anything else around...? Windows Recovery does not produce anything - the dynamic disk doesn't exist apparently!

I know you say its unique to that system it was created but what if I make another dynamic disk within the same machine? Would another dynamic disk SEE this bust dynamic disk?

~David.
 
No you have not been forgotten but you disappeared for about a month we were not sure if you tried anything suggested. So what have you done? Anything?

To answer the one question i see. NO. Creating a new dynamic disk will not see the bust disc cause it will not have been created with the dynamic disk. It was previously created and then crashed. This is what happens when you use RAID. If it fails it is pretty much gone.

You will have to try the data recovery options. That is all you can do.
 
No you have not been forgotten but you disappeared for about a month we were not sure if you tried anything suggested. So what have you done? Anything?

To answer the one question i see. NO. Creating a new dynamic disk will not see the bust disc cause it will not have been created with the dynamic disk. It was previously created and then crashed. This is what happens when you use RAID. If it fails it is pretty much gone.

You will have to try the data recovery options. That is all you can do.


and start over without raid
 
Thanks guys - sorry to bump my thread, how rude of me.

I hadn't tried anything since my last post since I didn't want to go ahead and do my new dynamic disk idea when it might not eventually work so I was just asking to save me the hassle, so now that I know it won't work. I'm stuck.

I am curious why the Windows Recovery won't do anything?

And yes, I will never be touching RAID or dynamic disks like this again.

*grumbles*
 
The recovery wont work cause it wont recognize the dynamic disk arrangement. The old disc will have a different setup than the new one. It just wont work correctly. I dont know what else to tell you. RAID is bad like that...
 
The recovery wont work cause it wont recognize the dynamic disk arrangement. The old disc will have a different setup than the new one. It just wont work correctly. I dont know what else to tell you. RAID is bad like that...

exactly
 
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