2.5" HDD with partitions, used in enclosure, connected to laptop..detects but unusable

raksrules

raksrules

Youngling
I have this 2.5" laptop HDD which I think had 3-4 partitions. I t was in laptop which has been sold now. I kept the HDD with myself. I bought this 2.5" HDD enclosure from ebay and put the HDD in the enclosure and connected the same to my laptop. It detected the HDD fine (i think), drivers installed and all messages came.
But the HDD did not appear in my computer. Same thing happened when i connected the external HDD to another laptop.
Now when i go to computer management, i can see the additional drive but no capacity is shown. I have attached a screenshot here. I cannot do much here except when i right click i have option to convert to basic disk, no idea what that means. But it says if i convert to basic disc it will delete all the data.
Is there any way to use the HDD without losing the data ? Or at least backup the data before i convert to basic or whatever.
Any way out ?

PS: The Disk1 says Dynamic and Invalid. This is the externally connected HDD which is giving problems.

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W

whitestar_999

Super Moderator
Staff member
let me guess.the laptop had win 7 & at some point someone decided to shrink/extend C drive using win 7 disk management.microsoft should have included a warning in win 7 that such operations will result in changing of disk from basic to dynamic.connect this hdd using sata cable to a desktop & then use easeus partition master free home edition to convert it back to basic disk without data loss(still take backup before that because there are no guarantees).
 
OP
raksrules

raksrules

Youngling
whitestar_999 said:
let me guess.the laptop had win 7 & at some point someone decided to shrink/extend C drive using win 7 disk management.microsoft should have included a warning in win 7 that such operations will result in changing of disk from basic to dynamic.connect this hdd using sata cable to a desktop & then use easeus partition master free home edition to convert it back to basic disk without data loss(still take backup before that because there are no guarantees).
Click to expand...

This HDD did have Windows 7 installed on it but i am sure i never shrunk or anything but yes extension using inbuilt disk management, i may have done, don't remember.

I know the easiest way is to just convert to basic disk but that will delete everything. I don't know much about the data i have but i have a feeling there are things for which i want backup.

Any way i can attach this to a laptop (replace its internal HDD with this) and try booting that laptop using the windows 7 installation on my HDD and if it boots then i can take a backup.
 
OP
raksrules

raksrules

Youngling
Well fixed the issue (not completely). The "Reactivate disk" did not work and threw some error so i searched on the internet and came across a youtube video showing what is to be done. It involved using a Hex editor to change text 42 to 07 in the hex value of the problem HDD (once for each partition) and reboot machine and check. I did so and the HDD now detected fine and showed me all 4 partitions.
Two of them have data so there was no data loss i think. One of the HDD partitions shows it needs to format before i can use and capacity of the partition shows as just 995KB so something is wrong here.
Disk Management in control panel shows the HDD fine but differently with 2 partitions with total size just under 300 GB (which is ok for a 320 GB HDD). So through disk management entire HDD appears, not through the my computer.
I will take backup of whatever is necessary and then using that disk management, will format and combine the partitions.
 
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