Help! I'm in a spot of bother with Server 2003 Small Business Server. I'm running a server with 2 partitions on an 80Gb drive, c:/ drive as the OS and d:/ drive as a file-server. On friday I installed a second 80Gb drive to mirror the server. I converted Disk0 from Basic to Dynamic and now can't get the Server to boot. I've tried to run a recovery with the windows disk, but the recovery console, although picking up two partitions, does not assign drive letters and therefore I can't access the data. The Server 2003 disk doesn't pick up another installation of windows to do a full installation repair. I have also tried to the drive as a slave in another machine, assuming I can at least rebuild the server and transfer the data from the old disk, but again I can't see the data. I have read that Microsoft have a tool to extract a log for the MBR so that it can be analysed and this problem fixed but I'm having real trouble finding out how I'd go about obtaining this, and Microsoft are reluctant to help unless I pay either a subscription or 200+ registration with them, despite the problem coming from something Microsoft say should work fine. It's not until now I find that it's a known problem and I should have reverted my boot disk to a single partition before attempting this (something I will take heed of from now on). If anyone out there can help me get this server back up and running It would be much appreciated. Craine1875

Hello, Firstly, if you have any backup of this disk, I would like to suggest you format this disk and then use the backup to restore the drives. Also, I strongly suggest that you contact some data recovery companies, as this problem is probably caused by some hardware failure or improper operation and some critical data may have been corrupted. Problems related to hard disk are often complicated, and any incorrect change to the disk configuration may even cause more unpredictable problems. Here are some information just for your reference. However, please note that we cannot make any guarantee. Please pay more attention when making any further changes to the disk. ========================================= Please try to install this problematic disk to another machine as a slave drive, and see if it show up in the Disk Manager console. If not, this might be a physical error to your hard disk, or you could chkdsk, fixmbr or fixboot to try to fix it. If you can see the problematic disk in that console, please run the dmdiag command-line utility to check the status of the disk. Open a command prompt, and then type "dmdiag -v" (without quotations). If you see errors like "a format error was found in the private region of the disk", this could be a corruption to the LDM Database. For more details about the dmdiag command-line utility, please refer to: Dmdiag Overview: http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/en/library/42e2cd85-05fe-4b1d-9220-d5483325a5ae1033.mspx?mfr=true For this kind of problems, you may need to convert the dynamic disk to static disk and then get the data. Again, I strongly suggest that you contact come data recovery companies to do it because this needs to directly change some sector data on your disk. Do not do this before you know exactly what each sector data means. Here is a tool named DiskProbe to manaually change this dynamic disk to basic disk when the LDM database corrupted. Important caution: DiskProbe is a sector editor tool to directly edit, save, and copy data on a physical hard disk. Be cautious when making any changes to the structures of your hard disk. Because DiskProbe does not validate the proposed changes to records, incorrect values in key data structures can render the hard disk inaccessible or prevent the operating system from starting. If you cannot correct the changes you entered, you must re-create and reformat all volumes on the disk. You may need to change the system ID from 42 to 07 using this tool. For more details, please Install the SUPPORTS.MSI from the CD/DVD installation media under the path "SUPPROT\TOOLS" and read the dskprobe.chm in detail. Dskprobe Overview: http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/en/library/006902f1-bae9-4055-9ad2-123ea19006b71033.mspx?mfr=true Regarding information related to Master Boot Record sector data, please refer to: Master Boot Record: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windows2000serv/reskit/core/fncb_dis_dfrz.mspx?mfr=true Some reference: =============== Best practices for using dynamic disks on Windows Server 2003-based computers: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/816307 Dynamic Disks in the Windows Preinstallation Environment Are Reported as Foreign: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/331498 How to use the Disk Management Snap-in to manage Basic and Dynamic Disks in Windows Server 2003: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/323442 Best regards, Chang Yin Microsoft Online Community Support

Download ultimate Boot CD and go under boot management / bootloader and try to launch the OS from there, its possible that the system lost the bootloader info in the conversion. with the limited info here this is the best guess, one of the utilities on there will assist you in getting back up and running, also try the data recovery section if you cant get it to boot