Dynamic Disks and new computers

[Adcadet]

I'm pretty sure this has been discussed here or some other place, but my searches come up empty. Anyway, I'm wondering what hoops I have to jump through to read data off of a HD that's been converted to a dynamic disk if I decide to install it in a new computer. Since the FAT table is essentially kept in the registry, is it totally unreadable by the new machine (or new OS)? Or is there a utility to help find the FAT table? What does one do when a machine has an OS drive and a data drive (both are dynamic disks), and the OS drive dies?

Thanks,
Adcadet

 

[CougTek]

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=266177 might help you.

 

[Adcadet]

no spanned, striped, mirrored or RAID 5 in any of my systems ever. So it looks like I'm safe.

But how will the new OS find the partition table?

 

[ddrueding]

by importing the foreign disk....RAID or not

 

[Adcadet]

by importing the foreign disk....RAID or not

Does the foreign disk, even though it is a dynamic disk, still maintain a FAT table somewhere obvious that the new OS (Win2k or greater) will recognize?

 

[Mercutio]

Sort of. It maintains a Master File Table, which Windows 2000 and up will recognize. If you put a dynamic disk on a Win98 PC and run fdisk, it shows up as "Non DOS disk" instead of as being an unreadable NTFS (large) volume.

Take my word for it, they're perfectly interchangable as long as you aren't going back to 9x.