Solved HDD divided into 2 simple volumes with same drive letter F

[magruseR]

Hi!
So I have a 1TB HDD that had an old back up partition of 175GB on it and a storage partition of 755GB. I used disk manegement to clear/delete the smaller volume so I could create a new back up for my recently installed OS. Somehow, (never tinker whilst looking after a screaming baby) I now have 2 simple volumes, both labelled as drive F.
I have about 700GB of stuff on the original larger partition and not to keen on having to buy another HDD to back that up. I also tried EaseUS Partition Master but the option to "convert to basic disk" is not there maybe because there are 2 very small (..MBs) unallocated partitions that seemingly only EaseUS can detect?

I would like to return the drive to a basic disk and create a backup partition on it without losing all my data, is this at all possible?
Thanks in advance

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Someone else will have to help you with the two volumes having the same drive letter (weird, that).

However, it's not a very good idea to have a backup installed inside your computer, let alone on the same drive. If the computer or the drive should ever fail, there goes your backup with it. Backups should be on an external drive (or an internal type drive in a dock) and connected to the computer only when updating the backup (which should be frequently). It's also a good idea to have at least two backup drives since even a backup drive can fail unexpectedly (ideally one would be kept onsite and the other offsite). An easy way to have and maintain an offsite backup would be to use a food good cloud backup storage, such as Carbonite.

 

[magruseR]

The drive F is not my OS drive I have an SSD for that, the 1TB HDD is specifically for backing up only. I will take your advice and get an external for an OS backup too thanks. Stil, l would like to get the F;F drive back to basics though

 

[whs]

I suggest you post a picture of your Disk Management for further analysis.

 

[magruseR]

Thanks whs I hope this helps ...

 

[magruseR]

..the second pic is the readout from easeUS ...

 

[whs]

The two F partitions on Disk 1 are a spanned (dynamic) volume. Convert them back to basic disk and you will be OK.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/26829-convert-dynamic-disk-basic-disk.html

 

[Hallimon]

The spanned volume(dynamic) isn't allowed to convert basic disk. You could try to resize two F: volume (including the unallocated space) into one volume on EaseUS Partition, then convert to basic disk.

Click right F: (175.78GB) -> resize/move partition -> drag partition to fill full the unallocated space, as long as there is no unallocated space, two F: partitions would be one F volume.

 

[magruseR]

here's a screenshot of easeUS, it only has the 4 operations listed in the left panel available to me for F... the unallocated partitions have no operations available

 

[magruseR]

I have tried to use partition wizard as instructed and this is th result I got; apparently it will only convert simple or mirrored dynamic volumes back to basic however it doesn't specify what I have ... please can anyone help there must be a simple solution to this all I did was try to resize a partiyion in disk management and all this dynamic nonsense happenned.

 

[magruseR]

pic of part wiz result

 

[jumanji]

Hi magruseR,

I had never put my thoughts on dynamic disks and so I usually stay away when I see dynamic disk .(gregrocker knows. I had roped him in another thread where I saw a dynamic disk with two separate partitions with the same drive letter with an intermediate partition.)

But my indulgence in GPT disks gave me atleast some insight into it.

In GPT disks Microsoft creates a 128 MB MSR partition specifically intended to store any reversible data that any software may keep for the reversal process.. For example when you convert a basic GPT disk into a dynamic disk, the data necessary to convert it back to a basic disk will be stored in the 128MB Microsoft System Reserved Partition.This 128MB MSR partition will not be visible to the user in Windows Disk Management and therefore cannot be meddled with by the user and all such data is safely held.

In the case of MBR disk this reverse process data is kept in hidden sectors 1 to 2047.

What I believe has happened in your case is that when you did the clear/delete and whatever else you did to get rid of the first partition, has also cleared the sectors 1 to 2047( Doing a diskpart clean also will clear off these sectors) and therefore you have lost the ability to reverse it from dynamic to basic with that reversal data lost.

Your only option in such a case will be, to backup all data to another drive, delete both the partitions and create a new basic disk. If you cannot do that in Windows Disk Management you can do it with any third party partition/format software.

Also do a drive cleanup as in my post http://www.sevenforums.com/hardware...but-does-not-appear-explorer.html#post3010096 to get rid of old drive data in Windows Registry. ( Do this after disconnecting your 1TB drive. You can reconnect after a reboot on completion of the drive cleanup.)

 

[magruseR]

Hiya Jumanji,
You are correct some of the sectors between 1 and 2047 were indeed deleted during my attempt to resize F ... I have now borrowed an ext hdd off a friend to do as you instructed (with easeUS)
Thankyou for your time