Topic: Dynamic Hard Drives & Vista

[MD8383]

I appreciate Dynamic Hard Drives are not recognised by XP, but is the Vista Home Premium OS supported after conversion to Basic/Primary Partition?
Issue: I have Medion MD8818 dual boot (XP/Vista) with Vista as external drive and works well with two Seagate ST3320820S hard drives. Bought a new Western Digital WD1600AAJS drive (cheap but sealed) and fitted it internally. After conversion to Basic in Disc Management (using Vista), XP reads it and communicates with it.
Installed Vista (original upgrade disc, no SP1) on it, but needed to install 96 updates; that's where problem began!
Is problem to do with Vista updates installing in wrong order (if so, how do we correct it?) or to do with Western Digital hard drive, somehow?
Anyone any ideas?

[Simon]

Hi MD.  Sorry, I have no idea, but someone will be along to help you soon. 

[Sandra]

Dynamic drives are recognised by XP but only in the Pro version, not sure which versions of Vista and Windows 7 works with them but presumably only Business and Ultimate would do so.

I have read your post a couple of times and cant find the problem that you are having sorry 

Are you saying that either XP or Vista can not now see the new drive 

[MD8383]

That's my understanding, Sandra, that dynamic drives can be used with XP Pro and Vista Business/Ultimate.
But the drive can be seen with Vista Home Premium (but not XP) and I used Vista Home Premium to convert the disc from Dynamic to Basic, with Primary partition (using Disc Management). It then worked with XP and I could send files to and from the disc. (As I'm writing this, I remember - whether it's relevant or not- I had to manually set the 'send to' command, I think in Vista but not XP!).

Now for a few more details on the problem, which I appreciate I didn't explain explicitly:
I managed, eventually (after a few attempts), to load Vista Home Premium in dual boot arrangement using the 'free' Upgrade disc supplied with the MD8818 (doesn't need activation/serial) on the new hard disc. (I installed from XP, as it 'fixes' drive designations and automatically sets up 'dual boot').
In Windows update, there were 96 'important' updates, so I proceeded to install and never succeeded after umpteen attempts. I saw a plethora of seemingly misleading error messages both software (NTLDR missing, Black Desktop, Corrupt Registry, Need to install important update etc) and hardware (Memory, Disc).  Trying to install SP1 failed, as it needed some important updates beforehand.
In XP mode, there are no hardware issues.
Had to resort to using Vista 'Repair' several times to get Vista to boot and to restore- until finally it gave up, saying 'could not fix PC'.

[Sandra]

OK, I understand the problem now.
Unfortunately I cant think of a solution at the moment but I would think its definately the updates which have corrupted the MBR on the Vista OS.
Maybe if you formatted the drive and installed Vista again, directly from the upgrade disc itself instead of from inside XP, that may work.
I know you only have the upgrade disc but I read somewhere that it can be installed from that but may need to then select the upgrade option and reinstall again saying its the upgrade.
If I can think of anything else I will let you know but thats all I can think of for now.

[MD8383]

Never had a problem before using the Vista Upgrade disc and installing from XP on the external hard drive and setting up dual boot (several times), which has got me thinking the new drive has limited functionality with Vista Home Premium, ie OK for storage but not OS. (Perhaps 'cos I converted it from Dynamic to Basic with Vista Home Premium, whereas it should have been with Ultimate or Business?). However, seen no evidence for this, except one should use dynamic discs for Vista Ultimate or Business!

One of the upgrade sessions did corrupt the MBR but I used VistaBootPro and reset BIOS to defaults to clear. And different upgrade sessions threw up different symptoms.

I'm tempted to put the converted dynamic disc into an enclosure for storage and use one currently in the enclosure in the PC, but I haven't got the time currently and I'll wait for some other inspiration!

[MD8383]

Haven't had chance to exchange hard drives between PC and external enclosure, but have installed the Vista via a clean install directly on booting the upgrade disc- as Sandra suggested.
Vista did install and automatically activated.
However, I again experienced bootup problems in Vista- even before installing Vista updates;  even after using Vista Repair and obtained a BSOD due to added hardware.
As there are no problems in XP (Media Centre) or with Vista installed on an external hard disc, and as the only hardware added is the converted dynamic disc, I have come to the conclusion that the issues are to do with this disc! (Even though it passes the WD tests- it was new!)

[Sandra]

It does sound like possibly a faulty drive. Maybe its just a couple of bad sectors that arent used on each startup 

[MD8383]

Surprising thing is that the drive was sealed new and I got it via an IT company, who often convert to basic discs to use as storage media.
Also, Vista Home Premium will boot up OK, but if I try to do simple things, eg like connecting wifi to my router, it won't start next time. (Also, whilst connection to router is normally fast, with this disc, it either takes ages, if at all).
You may be right Sandra, but it seems that any operation prevents startup. If I leave it as is, it starts fine.
It seems that conversion to basic using Vista Home Premium doesn't allow perfect execution of the Vista Home Premium OS, just makes it a storage medium.
Might borrow Vista Ultimate to test this out!

[MD8383]

Update/Success
Finally, I got round to removing the ex-Dynamic hdd from the MD8818 and placed it in an exterior e-Sata enclosure.
And I got Vista to load normally.

What I did was
a) delete partition, using Vista (SP2) of a MD8800 PC,
b) create new partition in the MD8818 in XP Mode, and
c) did ‘fresh’ install (not sure if this was necessary!)

I used the MD8818, ‘cos Vista Home Premium upgrade was for this PC and it doesn’t need serial-which is used on another PC.

So, hard drive is OK!

Why it worked this time is not clear; there are two differences:
i)   I used freshly installed Vista (not SP1 or SP2) in an external enclosure (of MD8818) to convert internal disc from dynamic to basic and to create a ‘simple volume’, and
ii)   Disc is now in an enclosure.

(Previously, I was also getting consistency checks on the internal drive, even in XP mode, followed by ‘crashing’).

Strange beasts computers!

[Rik]

Very. Glad you're sorted.

[Simon]

Indeed.  Thanks for letting us know. 

[MD8383]

Eventually, I'll put it back in the PC and it should work- unless, of course, the cables were dodgy!