Converting Dynamic drive to Basic drive without data loss.

Hi Reverse,

I am glad to note that you used Hex editor to change the dynamic disk to basic. That of course is one of the easiest things one should try first. You probably changed one byte 42 to 07. Right? Now I am just curious to know whether you did it for the third partition also? ( Since you had three partitions, you would have seen three strings of 16 byte length partition data. Since partition 1 and 3 were showing RAW, did you change 42 to 07 in both partition no.1 and partition no.3?)

Usually, when it is a single partition and you change 42 to 07 in the only partition string you see, the drive will immediately change to basic, and not only that it will show the correct format also, say NTFS and you will be able to access it with no further action.

In your case that did not happen that is why I am wondering whether changing the byte for the third partition also could have made it and resolved your problem.

Anyway, that is only a post-mortem, and now that your whole drive shows RAW, you may use two approaches to see whether you can access the drive.

1. Boot from a live Linux CD/pendrive

2. try Partition Recovery Wizard in the recent version of Partition Wizard again

jumanji said:

Hi Reverse,

I am glad to note that you used Hex editor to change the dynamic disk to basic. That of course is one of the easiest things one should try first. You probably changed one byte 42 to 07. Right? Now I am just curious to know whether you did it for the third partition also? ( Since you had three partitions, you would have seen three strings of 16 byte length partition data. Since partition 1 and 3 were showing RAW, did you change 42 to 07 in both partition no.1 and partition no.3?)

Usually, when it is a single partition and you change 42 to 07 in the only partition string you see, the drive will immediately change to basic, and not only that it will show the correct format also, say NTFS and you will be able to access it with no further action.

In your case that did not happen that is why I am wondering whether changing the byte for the third partition also could have made it and resolved your problem.

Anyway, that is only a post-mortem, and now that your whole drive shows RAW, you may use two approaches to see whether you can access the drive.

1. Boot from a live Linux CD/pendrive

2. try Partition Recovery Wizard in the recent version of Partition Wizard again

I did not have 3 lines of Hex Data. Im not really sure why, but there was only one line. I changed it to 7, rebooted, and it showed up as a single drive. Im not quite sure why it did this, but it worked nonetheless. 1c0 was the only line that was populated.



I was able to read the drive with Minitool Power Data Recovery. I havnt started sorting through it, but after a 3 hours scan my files were intact, at least many of them. Its a lot of stuff to sort through, and Im not even sure what Im looking for because most of my photos and important stuff is backed up. Im mostly just worried about those few things that do not come to mind until after I reformat the drive and set it back up.

jumanji said:

Yep, in the current status I see only one partition string. ( It may be because you had already used many partitioning/recovery programs including rebuild MBR. I only wish you had backed up the first sector before trying any of it.)

Notwithstanding, you can be rest assured that all your data is still there.

While I do not recommend aborting any recovery process that you have already initiated - let it complete, I would still recommend you try the Partition Recovery Wizard in the latest version of MiniTools Partition Wizard.

Do a Quick scan and if it does not find the partitions, do a Full scan. If all the partitions are found, you will see it reflected in the disk map. If it does reflect your original disk partitions, then you can safely apply the changes and it will rewrite the partition table in the first sector and you should be able to see and access your disk as before ( since it has already become a basic disk)

If it succeeds, nothing like that for you can straight away access your disk, without needing to recover and copy elsewhere.

If it does not, and you are not happy with MiniTools Power Data Recovery which you are running now, you can look into using a Live Linux CD/pendrive - does not take much time to make one- and then PhotoRec.

Yes, I rebuilt the MBR after I got it converted. Ive got Partition Recovery running on it right now like you suggested.

Ive ran Minitools Power Data Recovery as well as EaseUS Data Recovery on the drive. I cant find anything that I dont have backed up so Im going to wipe it and get it usable again.

Big thanks to everyone for the advice.