I recently reformatted my hard drive and reinstalled win xp pro but before i done that I moved all my photos music and documents I needed to my second hard drive. After reinstalling xp my F drive wasn`t there after trying to assign a letter to the drive it states the hard drive is dynamic and unreadable. I have tried everything I can think of is there anyway to recover it or is all lost? It say I can convert it to basic but all data on the drive will be lost NOOOOOOOOO!!!!! HELLLLLLPPPPP!!!! Please

try right click on properties of the drive letter in question
go to security page add all users may take a few secs to update
how are you able to view the info on drive ,with drive manager?
do you see drive in bios or on boot?
you also may need to update ownership of same when in properties /security click advanced
found this: credit to Michael Solomon MS-MVP
XP-Pro



If you have XP Pro, temporarily change the limited account to
administrative. First, go to Windows Explorer, go to Tools, select Folder
Options, go to the View tab and be sure "Use Simple File Sharing" is not
selected. If it is, deselect it and click apply and ok.



If you wish everything in a specific folder to be accessible to a user,
right click the folder, select properties, go to the Security tab, click
Advanced, go to the Owner tab,
select the user you wish to have access, at the bottom of the box, you
should see a check box for "Replace owner on subcontainers and objects,"
place a check in the box and click apply and ok.

The user should now be able to perform necessary functions on files in the
folder even as a limited account. If not, make it an admin account again,
right click the folder, select Properties, go to the Security tab and be
sure the user is listed in the user list. If not, click add and type the
user name in the appropriate box, be sure the user has all the necessary
permissions checked in the permission list below the user list, click apply
and ok.

That should do it and allow whatever access you desire for that folder even
in a limited account.

quick question: did you install winXP home or winXP pro?

iirc, XPpro shouldnt have a problem reading the dynamic disks, however XPhome cannot read dynamic disks, only basic.

you didnt by any chance have XPpro on previously but now have XPhome on...?

Thanks fellas for the advice it turned out you have to install SP1 first I gave up trying to sort it out and finnish installing everything else after installing SP1 the second hard drive appeared with everything on it although some of my mps dont work they say access denied deleted them and copied them back from the CD`s bit annoying but nothing was lost. THANKS AGAIN for your help