Vista not recognising Sata drive in ext caddy, disk management wants me to format

furman · 24 Mar 2008 at 22:06

Hi,
My old XP pc died so I took out the SATA HDDs and I am trying to get data off them with a USB2 SATA caddy. The problem is Vista won't recognise the drives, in Disk Management the drive is visible but to convert to a Basic drive (from Dynamic) it needs to format the drive. Is there anyway to get around this? I don't want to open my PC and install but would this be the only way?

Thanks

fobose · 24 Mar 2008 at 22:22

You'll need to open your PC up and plug it in - its not hard, just lay the hard drive on the bottom of your case till you've recovered your data

IIRC Dynamic disks are not supported externally.

furman · 24 Mar 2008 at 22:27

I know how to plug it in, but because it's a new PC I don't want any warranty issues.

Hmm it seems I am buggered then..

rpstewart · 25 Mar 2008 at 09:29

fobose said:
Dynamic disks are not supported externally.

Yup, internal connection is the only way to get data off it.

Not sure whether eSATA has the same restrictions though, especially for folk like me whose eSATA port is just an internal one routed outside.

furman · 28 Mar 2008 at 11:39

Hi,
I was thinking the same thing, would an ESATA port be the solution?

dss · 28 Mar 2008 at 11:49

furman said:
I know how to plug it in, but because it's a new PC I don't want any warranty issues.

Hmm it seems I am buggered then..

Is there anyway for the company to tell that you have opened up your computer?

rpstewart · 28 Mar 2008 at 13:05

dss said:
Is there anyway for the company to tell that you have opened up your computer?

Normally a nice little sticker across a case join saying "warranty void if broken"

furman · 28 Mar 2008 at 14:33

There is a sticker on the case which I have to break to open - I am told that the company has an open case warranty but as it is already dodgy (something about the RAM) I don't want to open it until that is sorted by the engineer.

furman · 28 Mar 2008 at 16:38

I just tried it on an old XP laptop, same thing. Must be a SATA thing - didn't know anything about this before.

furman · 28 Mar 2008 at 16:43

Doing a quick search on google I found this info:
> If you are using Home Premium, then you will not be able to use a dynamic
> drive. Dynamic drives are not supported in either of the Home Editions.
But I get the issue on XP hmmm actually that is also XP Home.

rpstewart · 28 Mar 2008 at 17:06

No version of Windows supports external dynamic disks.