reactivating offline dynamic disks

zaxxon · Aug 19, 2008

I have an Asus M2NPV-VM motherboard with NVIDIA nForce 430 Chipset SATA RAID
controller on.

I am using the controller to connect to 4 disks:
2x160GB in mirror configuration and
2x400GB in a stripe configuration.
The Operating system, XP PRO SP3, sees 2 Drives:
one Basic Disk - 153GB as the system and boot partition
and one dynamic disk - 754GB for Data

I converted the DATA drive to Dynamic Because i planned on mirroring it later.
a few hours ago i Booted it up and i now cant access the DATA drive.
In Disk management i can see the dynamic disk, DATA, shows as Offline and
has a red 'no entry' icon on it. when i click on reactivate disk i get an
error messege from the LDM(Logical Disk Manager) saying : "The operation did
not complete. Check the system Event Log for more information on the error"

when i check the event viewer-system log i get this error messege:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: LDM
Event Category: None
Event ID: 2
Date: 19/08/2008
Time: 00:49:27
User: N/A
Computer: GEVER
Description:
INTERNAL Error - The disk group contains no valid configuration copies
(C10000B6).

For more information, see Help and Support Center at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

I tryed booting to the recovery console, to see if i can see it there, but
when i log on and type MAP, i get a list, in which the DATA drive is listed
but with out a drive letter or a label just as :
?: \device\Harddisk1\partitio1

I tried running device manager in hidden device mode and removed 'ghost'
devices by running the following commands:
set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
cd %SystemRoot%\System32
start devmgmt.msc
then removed drives that were ghosted and restarted to no avail still can
not import or reactivate.

i can find the files using disktest -
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Main_Page. so i know(i assume?) the files and
drives are ok, and i am almost sure its a partitioning issue

can you please tell me how i can access the drive ?
I am assuming that the data is still intact because the controller utilities
cant find any thing wrong with it through post. i know i might be wrong, but
i have a feeling its to do with its partition table.
Can any one help?

Andrew E. · Aug 19, 2008

In diskmgmt.msc,you L.click the disk or set,go to actions,all,look for "make
active"..If tried that,open cmd,type

iskPart In DiskPart,type:list disk
Type:
list volume Type:HELP For all cmds..Or,look at kb307899 Or,look at TechNet
pages for dynamic disks
at:http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc787481.aspx

Bill Blanton · Aug 19, 2008

You might try this. Run ptedit32.
ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/tools/pq/utilities/
Select the drive from the drop down box. Does the volume show as 42 in
the "Type" field? Does the "Sectors" field (* 512) add up to the drive size?

You can probably convert it to a simple NTFS volume simply by changing the type
from 42 to 07. I know this works with a dynamic volume "spanning" only 1 disk.
(assuming it's healthy of course.)

In theory that should also be applicable to your hardware RAID striped set, as
\that would be one disk as far as Windows is concerned. (though I've never
tried, so you're on your own there)

Of course, reboot after the change.

Bill Blanton · Aug 19, 2008

"Mark partition as active" only sets the "boot flag" in the partition table. It
has nothing to do with bringing a drive "online", which I assume you mean.

(I think I've posted this info to you before (maybe more than once), but you
never respond....)

Pallieter · Dec 10, 2008

My situation (relevant details):

DISKPART> list disk

Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ---------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 76 GB 0 B
Disk 1 Online 466 GB 0 B *
Disk 2 Online 233 GB 0 B *

DISKPART> detail disk

WDC WD25 00KS-00MJB0 SCSI Disk Device
Disk ID: 4FEFDAD5
Type : SCSI
Bus : 3
Target : 2
LUN ID : 0

There are no volumes.

DISKPART> online

DiskPart brought the selected volume online.

DISKPART> list volume

Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- ---------
--------
* Volume 0 Simple 38 GB Failed
Volume 1 Simple 195 GB Failed
Volume 2 N Network NTFS Simple 466 GB Healthy
Volume 3 D CD-ROM 0 B
Volume 4 C System NTFS Partition 76 GB Healthy System

Note that all drives are formatted in NTFS and technically okay.

Pallieter · Dec 19, 2008

Dwai1967 · Feb 13, 2009

Bill Blanton said:
You might try this. Run ptedit32.
ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/tools/pq/utilities/
Select the drive from the drop down box. Does the volume show as 42 in
the "Type" field? Does the "Sectors" field (* 512) add up to the drive size?

You can probably convert it to a simple NTFS volume simply by changing the type
from 42 to 07. I know this works with a dynamic volume "spanning" only 1 disk.
(assuming it's healthy of course.)

In theory that should also be applicable to your hardware RAID striped set, as
\that would be one disk as far as Windows is concerned. (though I've never
tried, so you're on your own there)

Of course, reboot after the change.

Bill you are the Man!!!

I've been trying for three days to clone my C:\ drive over to a new larger
drive but because I changed the drives to dynamic it's been a pain in the u
know what!

Although wasnt 100% percent sure of what you meant by "Does the "Sectors"
field (* 512) add up to the drive size?" The drive type did show up as 42 in
the type field and the drive size did match so I crossed my fingers and
changed the type to 7 saved the changes, rebooted, went into the drive mgr
deleted the dynamic vol that was no longer valid and all is right. (I had a
back up of the partition from the changed drive so no worries there, to
anyone else make sure to do the same before you try this!)

I'm now going to copy the drive over to my new drive and hope for the
best...Thanks a mil!

Dave.

R. Dupuis · Sep 28, 2009

I confirm that the answer provided by Bill Blanton works like a charm.

I got two XFX Revo64 driverless hardware raid 3 cards in my system and got
the same problem. Spanning multiple disks (3 of them per card) i got rid of
the problem. So yes it works also on hardware raid cards as well. I am glad
to get back my 2,8 TB of data with restoring lots of LTO-2 tapes!

R. Dupuis
MCSE

reactivating offline dynamic disks

zaxxon

Andrew E.

Bill Blanton

Bill Blanton

Pallieter

Pallieter

Dwai1967

R. Dupuis