Chose to span some volumes... messed up?

Hi, I got a new harddrive, but it wasn't showing up under windows.

So, I read some help which pointed me to opening disk management, and selecting the new volume. Somehow I chose to make a spanned volume, since there were some other unallocated spaces on the other disks. I read about the warning of not being able to have other operating systems other than my main one, but... I didn't quite understand that.

Anyway, I've got my spanned volume, and it's available to me to read/write, but in the process I've lost bootable partitions...

Here's a pic of what it currently looks like: Disk 2 is the new one, and when I first entered disk managment, it was unallocated. 8 MB (each) of the two other disks were unallocated too. Disk 3 has windows XP in the first partition, that was previously bootable, but currently isn't. Disk 0 had another OS, which I used from time to time.

I'd like to get these back. Is it possible, or is the damage already done? I don't care about the spanning stuff. I'd just like to have all disks as simple drives, with the other two able to be used to independently as I used to be able to.

So... can anyone help me with this? How can I restore things to the way I had it? I'd also like to have access to the new drive. Should I have simply formatted it or something?

Your error was in saying yes to "dynamic disks". Always say no.

Any data you may have on the dynamic disks is at risk, but you may be able to get out of it.

Take a look here:

Convert a Dynamic Disk to a Basic Disk

tryguy said:

OK, I've read some of that. I think Option 1 seems OK. What if I just delete the purple portion of Disk 3? Will that turn the whole of Disk 3 back into simple?

No, if I read the tutorial correctly.

Do you have all data on disks 0, 2, and 3 backed up? Do you care about anything on the partitions on those disks?

If I read the tutorial correctly, option 4 is the only way to convert back to basic without losing data.

ignatzatsonic said:

tryguy said:

OK, I've read some of that. I think Option 1 seems OK. What if I just delete the purple portion of Disk 3? Will that turn the whole of Disk 3 back into simple?

No, if I read the tutorial correctly.

Do you have all data on disks 0, 2, and 3 backed up? Do you care about anything on the partitions on those disks?

If I read the tutorial correctly, option 4 is the only way to convert back to basic without losing data.

Yeah, thanks. :) I worked that out too. So... I'm definitely going to try option 4. Can you tell me how I can efficiently backup the data on the two other drives?

M appears to be a 2 TB drive and OK now. I'd drag stuff there. All those dynamic partitions are small, so it should fit.

ignatzatsonic said:

M appears to be a 2 TB drive and OK now. I'd drag stuff there. All those dynamic partitions are small, so it should fit.

OK, I'll do that now. And, at least that way the data will be there. Thanks for the guidance.

OK, sorry for the delay. The back up took a while, and then I went to bed. Since then, I've recovered my drives using that option 4. There was another step I had to take to make them as they were, which was setting the corresponding partitions as active.

But once done, everything looks like it's fine.

So, thanks a lot! This saved me quite a lot of worry.

Oh, and the only step in Option 4 I couldn't match up in practice, was the part about finding the apply button in the lower left. No matter what I clicked, I couldn't get that to show up. So, I just had to click the upper Apply. In the end, I think it's the same thing, but it's a error in that faq. Still, it's a great document.

Thanks, and solved. :)