December 11, 2008
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Recovering Dynamic Drives in Windows XP
Hopefully, thisgets picked up with the same high search rank of my "rectal bleeding" entry (I still keep getting hits from people asking about rectal bleeding after marathons... ick). As some of you might have known, my computer kind of died on me for a while. Well, I finally got it to a repair guy. They plugged it in, resettled all of the connectors and it worked fine, at least for the most part. I suspect he might have also done some degree of OS flash on it, because I've lost a number of drivers, my computer's date was set to some time in 2002, and my dynamic drive settings were gone. What's a dynamic drive, you might ask? It's something that Microsoft cooked up for Windows NT and included in Windows XP Professional. In fact, by default, it seems to make any added disks dynamic drives. This apparently lets you reassign drive letters more flexibly, resize partitions on the fly, and do a RAID through the operating system. It also means that your dynamic drive is useless if you ever have to go to Windows XP Home or your primary drive gets fried. Oh, and if you reinstall the operating system, Windows forgets all of your partitions and offers only the option to reformat. This happened to me once before and I panicked and sent the computer out for repair. Having just gotten this computer back from repair (and not having access to the person who fixed this the last time), I did some poking around and I found a solution.
The solution was within an article on how to non-destructively move data from a dynamic disk to a basic disk. They recommended a utility called TestDisk for restoring partitions. And, by golly,it worked. I ran TestDisk on the dynamic drive and it recovered all of my drive settings. I had a few annoyances involving reassigning drive letters, but by and large, this was quite a success. My drive is back up and running now. So, should anyone else run into this, here's how to fix it.
Comments (5)
Sounds like a pain.
XP why? Get Linux. Get ubuntu. Its more powerful, more secure, faster, less system requirements, and its easier than XP. And if you don't want to give up all your problems, you can run windows programs with wine or by using VirtualBox. VBox will run on Intel macs too. Install Ubuntu and VirtualBox on on a mac and you can run all 3 operating systems at once without violating Apple's EULA (should you have the need). And DroidQuest runs quite nicely in Ubuntu, (in fullscreen no less).
@zerothis -
Eh, problem is, I really like my games. Yes, one can buy Cedaga or run a virtual box, and get the games running at about 90% effectiveness... or I can run Windows, which is the OS they're designed for.
@Duggan -
I really like games too. Check out my list here: . Being a Linux user hasn't stopped me from enjoying games. In fact, the vast majority of the games that I own I pretty much play exclusive on Linux. In addition to Sun's VirtualBox there are other visualizers, pure wine, and Crossover Games. Older windows games can even play in a windows installation of DOSbox. It may not play PS3, Xbox and Wii very well, but then again neither does Windows. Linux supports more hardware than windows, try using a 15-pin Joystick, pedals, and throttle in Vista or a Gravis GrIP controller. Or running an Amiga, 3D0, or CD-i hardware emulator expansion card. Control games with two separate keyboards and three mice if you like. Play 1.33 only games in true widescreen, even three monitors. iD software makes most of their games Linux compatible. And there's some good Linux games too.
Besides, I can run the Original versions of Robot Odyssey in addition to DroidQuest, what other games do you need?
@zerothis -
oops! my games list
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