Reformatting with Dynamic Drive?

[jas0nt]

good news: my partitions in Windows are all set to dynamic drive. however, yesterday, i was setting my RAM speeds to 333mhz, and totally fux0red my machine (it wouldn't past post, i was really worried), so i had to reflash my BIOS, remove the jumper, etc. anyway, the BIOS appears to be fixed now.

bad news: however, now, i can't even boot up into Windows without seeing an ugly blue screen. sometimes it says IRQL_NOT_EQUAL, others it has different messages when i remove 2 RAM sticks. anyway, so i was thinking i had to reformat anyway, with all the errors i get, slow bootup times, driver traces, corrputed event logs, etc.

very bad news: however, my main partition with my MP3s and DVDs are set in dynamic drive. when i reformat, everything else will be reformatted in a basic drive, which will mean my general drive would be unreadable (i've done it before, when i reformat all drives and leave behind dynamic ones, it would be unreadable in diskmgmt).

so basically, i want to know if there is anyway i can reset my dynamic drive to basic drive without getting into Windows?

 

[Vertigo Acid]

You could try sticking it in another computer, but I question why you would need to reformat to reinstalled windows. reinstall != reformat. A repair would probably work better anyway. But barring either of those, AFAIK no 3rd party programs can touch dynamic drives, not even Partition Magic 8 pro.

 

[aug1516]

You can reformat that partition without destroying data on all the others. The XP setup detects dynamic partitions and will install/format them as needed. As far as I know, the only way to convert back to basic is to reformat the drive and setup partitions again.

 

[Ice Czar]

Originally posted by jas0nt
good news: my partitions in Windows are all set to dynamic drive

that is a matter of opinion

might I ask why?

Partition Commander 8 can revert dynamic disks to basic

Id review these where I you
Dynamic Disks
Description of Disk Groups in Windows Disk Management
Dynamic vs. Basic Storage in Windows 2000
Basic and Dynamic Disks @ Windows & .net Magazine
HOW TO: Recover an Accidentally Deleted NTFS or FAT32 Dynamic Volume
Dynamic Disk Hardware Limitations (No firewire, USB, removable or laptop)
HOW TO: Set Up Fault-Tolerant Sets on Dynamic Disks in Windows 2000
Dynamic Disk Numbering and the DmDiag.exe Tool
HOW TO: Regenerate a Dynamic Mirrored Volume in Windows 2000
Restrictions on Extending or Spanning Simple Volumes on Dynamic Disks

Limits of Dynamic Disks in Windows 2000
LDMDump (Freeware utility) @ sysinternals
LDM Database @ Linux-NTFS project
LDM FAQ @ Linux-NTFS project