Need help on rescue Dynamic Volume

[arthurleung]

I had a bad weekend. Thought I'd build my third rig this weekend and reinstall windows for all the machines. Had a hard time trying to get windows installed. I've changed all my disks to dynamic disks in order to run small RAID0 volumes. Although I stopped running RAID0, the dynamic disk remained.

After trying to shift data around to free up two of my 200G IDE drives for windows installation, I decided that I will not use the 2 disks because they're too loud. But shifting 400GB data back into the disks takes a hell lot of time so I decided that I'll just free up one of the partition on my quiet disks and get windows installed.

Of course windows installer does not regonize my dynamic volumes (but the whole disk) and refuse to let me install on them. I googled and m$ said using diskpart retain command will allow me to install. I did it and the 10G dynamic partition I made did show up in the installer. Trying to install it and the installer. It said I can't install again, and tell me to delete the partition and recreate it. OK fine, I've emptied that 10G partition so you can do it. BUT no! Upon delete confirmation it CLEARED my whole dynamic disk.

The data is intact since I did not format it, and the old windows (on the very loud 200G drive, and somehow fu*ked up due to the audigy4 softmod driver screwing up (not supporting x64). The missing dynamic volume is showing as missing, while the disk which the installer "repartitioned" is shown as an empty disk.

M$ site said to recreate the volumes and recover it, but HELL you screwed me once and you expect me to fall into the trap again?

Please, what can I do to recover the volume without having any risk and any spare space?

I almost lost one of my 160GB disk when trying to shift things around

[javers]

Since your data is very critical to you my advice would be not to touch these disks and further. If at all possible I would start by disconnecting those drives physically, then beg / borrow / steal an old small hdd to just install windows on. Then re-attach your old drives and see what's left. If the volumes are still intact Windows should find them.

Jon