Dynamic to basic system disk conversion.

PiotrIr

Hi, I have problem with dynamic disk and appreciate any help.

Basically I used 2xDELL PE 2970 for Hyper-V cluster and found my server don’t have hardware RAID!!! Ok, so decided to use software Windows solution. After installed everything and adding virtual machines to cluster resources my HDDs crushed. Researched and found problem is in software mirror which shouldn’t work with cluster.

I decided to buy hardware RAID. However I don’t want to reinstall system so need to convert dynamic system disk to basic. I tried to take full Windows Server 2008 backup, than converted disk to basic and restore backup. After system restoration I found that is sitting on dynamic disk!!!

How I can came back to basic without using any third party software? Please help me.

Regards

jibbajabba

Diskpart

Change a dynamic disk back to a basic disk: Storage Services; Local File Systems

Check out the notes too though...

PiotrIr

Many thanks for your reply.

I used diskpart to change dynamic to basic. The problem is before you will use diskpart you need to delete all volumes. So you need to restore system from backup. But when you will restore system from backup you will get dynamic disk back even you had converted the disk to basic using diskpart before.

HeroPsycho

1) Install dskprobe.exe on the system. (This is one of the utilities in the Windows 2000 support tools on the install CD, and can be installed by simply copying the .exe file to the hard drive.)
2) Run dskprobe.exe on the system.
3) Select the Drives menu and “Physical Drive. . .”
4) Double click on the drive that you want to convert back to a basic disk. Click the “Set Active” button next to that drive.
5) From the Sectors menu, select “Read”
6) Accept the defaults (begin sector 0, read 1 sector) and click “Read”
7) In the editor, go to the “01C0″ line and the third bit should be a “42″. Change that to a “07″. **Note, a few machines have had this on the “01D0″ line instead. I don’t know what that means, so I wouldn’t try it unless it is on a pure test box. *****
From the Sectors menu, select “Write”. Confirm all dialog boxes. **Note: This is the step that will hose your box if you have not followed the above instructions correctly.**
9) Exit dskprobe.exe. Reboot
10) Run chkdsk on the affected logical drive(s). If any errors are found, do a chkdsk /f to fix them. Done.

Stuff I Do How To Convert A Dynamic Disk Back To Basic Without Data Loss

Do NOT attempt this without a valid backup. You can get a fully functional 30 day trial of Backup Exec System Recovery Server Edition. Back it up with that. You can restore just the partition without it making it a dynamic disk again if this blows up or otherwise fails.

PiotrIr

Many thanks for your reply.

Unfortunately it crashed HDD, system keeps restarting. Any other idea?

blargoe

You could try popping in the Windows CD and doing a repair at this point.

I think it woulda been easier to just reinstall and restore only the data.

PiotrIr

Restoring data is very easy in Windows Server 2008 and I checked even after change disk is still dynamic so I don't want really to repair system especially that it may became unstable.

HeroPsycho

HeroPsycho wrote: »

You can get a fully functional 30 day trial of Backup Exec System Recovery Server Edition. Back it up with that. You can restore just the partition without it making it a dynamic disk again if this blows up or otherwise fails.

Do that. You don't have much of a choice.

PiotrIr

"***** svdsinner writes: I did some research, and this relates to having multiple partitions on the drive. I assume partition 1 would be at "01C0", Partition 2 would be at "01D0", Partition 3 would be "01E0", and Partition 4 would be "01F0". I would assume that you would be required to change every partion on the drive back for this to work. However, I have not tested this. Do so at your own risk."

I found it some ware and it fixed my problem Many thanks for your help.

Megadeth4168

What a pain! I converted a couple of servers from Dynamic to Basic disks back in December...

I had the same issue, where I couldn't get back into Windows after the conversion, but, I did have a copy of Ultimate Boot CD for Windows! What a life saver!

I had to go into disk management and activate the disks. I also made the changes I needed to in basic disk...

Kaminsky

PiotrIr wrote: »

Dynamic to basic system disk conversion.

We've only just finished uploading him ! He's now fully integrated to all the threads.