Text - Mode Setup Displays Incorrect Dynamic Volumes

In Windows, the session manager Usetup.exe starts a mini-kernel mode phase called text-mode phase of setup. While the text-mode phase of setup runs, it completes different tasks, like examining the connected hard disks, inspecting the system for basic hardware installed, performing required Plug and Play detection and more. At times, when you try to repair unbootable system (when disk is initialized as dynamic disk) in this text-mode phase of setup, it might fail to display complete list and appropriate sizes of volumes.

Thus, you might incorrectly interpret the underlying disks and delete any of them accidentally. For example, you might see a volume containing several disks, while the actual size is not that large. If you delete such volume, you might unknowingly delete the other volumes as well, which leads to a critical data loss situation. To cope up with such problems, you can either use your recent data backup available or scan your drive using Data Recovery applications (if a clean data backup is unavailable).

You might observe the discussed symptoms in Recovery Console also while making an attempt to fix issues of unbootable system. Also, you might observe that system doesn’t give the clear distinction between basic and dynamic disks. Such problems are specifically encountered in a Windows 2000 system.

Cause

When you upgrade a basic disk to dynamic disk and basic disk had pre-existing logical or primary drives configured, it is called as hard-linked that setup recognizes as valid partitions. Such partitions possess partition table entry of type 05 for extended and 42 for primary, whereas, pure dynamic disks posses single partition table entry of type 42. Since Windows 2000 is not fully compatible with pure dynamic disk volumes and volumes on such disks are soft-linked until the setup gets completed, the setup assigns a single drive letter for all volumes contains in the whole drive.

Solution

To avoid data loss and overcome such issues, you should consider these methods:

1) To uniquely identify your volumes while repairing, you should name them accordingly
2) You should keep record of all included dynamic disks and volumes
3) Make sure that you don’t remove any dynamic volume unless all of them are required to be deleted

If you have deleted any dynamic volume and suffering data loss, while no valid data backup is available, you need to use Data Recovery Software. These are commercial products designed to scan a logically crashed drive and provide safe data recovery.