So, just reinstalled windows server 2003 on a server here at work.

I go to plug in my external hard drive and nothing comes up, no drive letters, etc. I go to disk management and it's there and says free space is 100% and data type is RAW

I connect same hard drive to my laptop and everything comes up fine and all my data is there

Exact same thing for one of hard drives (I've only reinstalled one thus far). I'm running a data recovery program now and it's finding everything just fine but why the hell isn't windows recognizing things right???

I also tried plugging a USB flash drive in and it came right up first try, no problems.

HELP????

4/10/2008 10:01:50 PM

Try making the disk active in disk management?

4/10/2008 10:08:10 PM

that isn't the problem.. I think the MFT tables are fucked up.

I ran a check on that and it found 52,000 MTF's which is about the right number of files for that drive.. so the data is def still there, just corrupt table I think

4/10/2008 10:10:21 PM

k managed to recover everything on one drive with "data doctor recovery"

it was the first one i tried so i imagine just about anything would have worked.

now i pray to god the next drive is this easy, because it's the important one

4/10/2008 10:40:16 PM

k, hopefully somebody can suggest something to help here.. It's finding some things but not anywhere close to all.

I'm trying http://www.ntfs.com/boot-disk.htm next after it finishes recovering everything it can which should be about 30 minutes.

Any other ideas?

I have an image of the partition before I reinstalled windows. I'm thinking of just reinstalling that and seeing if it brings them back up but damn I'm running out of time.

HALP

4/11/2008 12:00:13 AM

is it a dynamic partition or simple partition

4/11/2008 12:06:44 AM

dynamic

4/11/2008 12:24:19 AM

it makes NO sense why my external hard drive doesn't work on the server but works fine on my laptop and a few other computers I just tried for the hell of it.

4/11/2008 12:28:16 AM

incase anybody is reading..

a program called "raid to raid" which is designed to open partitions even when raid setups go bad is transferring my backups right now. as long as it finishes, I'm good.

4/11/2008 1:10:10 AM

Quote :

"dynamic"

there's your problem

w2k3 gets weird about dynamic drives

dynamic drives are a bad idea to start with

4/11/2008 9:12:11 AM

Quote :

"dynamic drives are a bad idea to start with"

4/12/2008 11:25:02 AM

Quote :

"dynamic drives are a bad idea to start with"

i learned this one first hand the hard way

hardware RAID controllers for me from here on out

4/12/2008 1:16:01 PM

Yea, learned my lesson

Managed to get everything off the drives tho so worked out ok considering

Now, somebody suggest some backup solutions

4/12/2008 2:22:05 PM

http://www.openfiler.com

4/12/2008 3:36:38 PM

awesome

4/12/2008 5:55:13 PM

yep, i use openfiler and <3 it

iscsi target + time machine = win,/]

4/13/2008 12:35:52 AM