dvpetta@gmail.com wrote:

> I'm having some issues with transferring a slave hard drive from
> an old xp computer to a new one. The drive in question is
> Maxtor's 6Y200P0, the drive only has data files (pictures, music,
> applications, etc). It's never been used as a "C" drive with windows
> installed on it. I checked Maxtor's website and I think I have the
> jumper settings correct in that I don't have any jumpers on it
> setting it as a slave.

Correct.

> So when I boot up the device manger can recognize
> it but XP doesn't show it in "My Computer".

Thats normal when XP doesnt recognise the drive formatting etc.

> I download Maxtor large drive software, run it to no avail. I run
> Maxtor's hardware software and it comes up with an issue in that the
> drive is "dynamic" and the software cannot proceed with installing it.

> So I go to Disk Management and see that the drive is listed as
> dynamic. I then did something and now it's "basic" but not all of the .

You've lost something at the end here.

> I don't think it's deleted any of the data and I'm not sure what
> to do at this point. The drive is showing in Disk Management
> as "Disk 1", basic, with only 189.2GB showing, now this drive
> is 200GB and the 189.2GB amount is the amount of data on
> the disk I don't want to lose.

Nope, that difference is the difference between binary and decimal GBs.
The hard drive manufacturers use decimal GBs and XP mostly uses binary GBs.

> When I right click the shade box for the drive the only
> options available is to create a new partion the drive.
> Will this erase the data on the drive?

It should only do that in free space, but its not clear what you
did to get it seen as a basic drive when it was initially dynamic.

> The next step is a choice between Primary & Extended partition,
> both of which I don't want to touch till I get some advice.

You should have done that before, when it didnt show up in My Computer.

You should have put <dynamic> in the XP help and followed the
instructions there on how to move a drive between computers.

> Any help will be appreciated. The screwed up thing about it is that
> I've actually don't this transfer process atleast twice before and
> each time it's a damn mystery to me. In the past I've been able to
> get around the disk being "dynamic" and low and behold it shows up.
> Now I've seem to have lost the dynamic designation and dealing with
> a basic disk that has alot of data that I need. The data is backed up
> to DVD-Rs and would be a hassle to have to upload 189GB of data.

That is the best approach now, wipe the drive with
something like clearhdd and then restore it from DVDRs.