Hi, Jeff.

1)  Partition Magic 8.0 does not work on Dynamic Disks -- they don't tell
you that on the box; only after you've spent the $s and get to the "fine
print" in the user's manual.

2)  Dynamic disks were a new concept introduced with Win2k.  I'm sure
they've been carried forward into XP Pro, but wouldn't know about XP home...

3)  It seems you've already stumbled across the answer to your problem.  Can
you re-hook that drive to the Win2k machine and copy them to CD?  You can
then put the drive back into your new XP home (don't ask) computer, convert
to basic disk (at which point XP Home should be able to read it, although
all the data will be gone), and then transfer the files from the CDs made on
the Win2k machine back to this now "basic" disk?  This would preserve your
data and allow you to use Drive Q going forward.

HTH.

Steve Sabljak
Space Coast PC Solutions, Inc.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeff Sederstrom" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, February 22, 2003 9:58 AM
Subject: [PCBUILD] foreign drive on win xp home


> i installed windows xp home on a computer that was originally running xp
pro (don't ask). i selected delete partition as part of the setup, then
installed the o/s to the newly created partition. this new partition is 100%
of drive c. i also had another separate hard drive, drive q, filled with my
mp3 files. the install went ok, but when i try to access drive q, it isn't
showing in "my computer". in disk management, it is listed as disk 1,
dynamic, and foreign. it has an option to convert it to basic, but says that
this will destroy the data.  i've searched the ms knowledgebase, and all i
could find was something under win2k about importing foreign disk.
unfortunately import foreign disk isn't one of the choices for me in disk
mgmt. the only choice is "convert to basic".
> the drive is listed in device manager, and shows no problems.  it's set as
slave on the primary ide channel.  i also tried it as master on the
secondary channel.  i've tried logging on as administrator, and even tried
it from within safe mode.
> i removed the drive and put it into a different computer running win2k
pro, and there i was given the option to import foreign drive.  i did this
and was able to read and write to the drive.  i tried partition magic 8, but
all the options for the q drive were grayed out.
> it's file system is ntfs, and the xp installation on the c drive is using
ntfs.  when i was running xp pro,it had no problem accessing the files on
the other drive. does xp home support importing a foreign drive?  please
help me save my files!
>
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