disk issue moving drive from XP to 7

[racerlupine]

I have a Western Digital 300GB SATA drive, formatted FAT32 under XP. This is NOT a boot disk. While it was in the XP box it was configured as a basic disc, single partition, no unallotted space. I put about 250GB of data onto it, then I took it out of the XP box and put into a Windows 7 box. System BIOS sees the drive no problem. However disk manager under 7 shows the disk as dynamic, invalid. It won't let me reactivate the disk ("The operation is not allowed on the invalid disk pack."). This drive has NEVER been configured dynamic. But it's never been in a 7 box till now either.

What's the deal? There must be something I'm not getting, some configuration that I need to do for this to work. All I want is for 7 to see the drive for what it is, a basic disk.

thanks

RACER

 

[Wandering one]

I think if you change disc to NTFS it should work. I go back and forth between my 7 and XP discs all the time with windows explorer and never had a bit of trouble.
Art.

On looking at your specs after the fact, your 64bit may not like it. Mine is all 32bit.
art.

 

[racerlupine]

Thanks for the suggestion. Looking at this again I didn't provide enough info. Just in case it wasn't clear: in both XP and 7 the drive is internal and connected to the SATA controller. It's not in a USB enclosure or anything like that.

Is it the FAT32 that 64bit may reject? I only did that because that drive used to be in a USB enclosure and it went back and forth between Mac and Windows. The 64bit thing seems more trouble than it's worth; 64bit XP came out what, 7 years ago I think, and still it can be impossible to find certain 64bit device drivers, even for newer devices. I wonder how many 64bit applications are really out there.

The 7 box is here with me in Ohio but my XP box is back in California, so I can't stick the drive back in to convert it under XP. I've got a boot CD with a boatload of utilities on it, I think I'll use that and see if there isn't a partition manager that'll do the conversion.

thanks

RACER