[cosmo1974]

Hi,

(1) My P4 system motherboard recently suffered a melt down.
(2) I'm trying to read one of my SATA HDDs via a laptop and external Welland USB Enclosure.
(3) Unfortunately the HDD is formatted as "Dynamic".
It can be seen but cant be read (I have XP SP2 installed).
(4) I have tried a "Basic" SATA HDD and all is OK.
(5) I have tried to use MyComputer / Manage / DiskManagement
to see the "Dynamic" drive but the only option I get for the HDD is "ConvertToBasic".
This is no good as all data will be lost!!!!

ANY IDEAS??
Thanks in advance.

[DosFreak]

Looks like Dynamic Disks are not supported on "portable computers" http://support.microsoft.com/kb/299598

I guess your motherboard replacement would qualify....

I'm thinking that if you take it out of the enclosure and put it in your PC you'd get the same behavior.

I've seen some posts on the net where you can convert to Basic and recover your data but I do not know how trustworth that is.

You could try reading this: http://mypkb.wordpress.com/2007/03/28/how-to-non-destructively-convert-dynamic-disks-to-basic-disks/

[jmmijo]

I thought that with XP Pro you could Import Foreign Disk option under the Computer Management -> Disk Management tool.