I apologise for posting this, but my Googling hasn't found an answer yet. I moved 2 SATA drives into my new PC running Win 7 last night, and although they show up in Device Manager, they don't appear in "Computer", and when I try to run Disk Management it says "Connecting to virtual disk service" and hangs the snap-in. I can hear the heads seeking fruitlessly every 10 seconds…

Have you switched it off and on again?

is the drive installed as IDE in the BIOS?

Have you switched it off and on again?

several times 🙂

is the drive installed as IDE in the BIOS?

the fancy BIOS is all auto-detect. As I said, the drives show up in Device Manager, correctly identified.

have you tried updating the drivers in the device manager?

or give the drive a letter in disk manager?

I think that's probably it ^

or give the drive a letter in disk manager?

Disk Manager hangs saying "connecting to virtual disk service" 🙁
It's dead and shows as not responding in Task Manager

trying to install one SATA at a time?

simon, this could be some of two things

firstly if the 2 sata discs have been uses previously by yourself or someone they could have been setup and running in a raid setup (this means the two discs appear as one and when a piece of data is written to them the data is split across the two hdd's. (hard to tell fully from your description if this is the situation, i suspect not though)

the second is that you have two brand new sata hdd's and your installing them, firstly look on the hdd's and check the jumpers are set to cable select then i would check the issue isn't that the hdd's don't have have any partitions or formatting.

download something like UBCD4 (ultimate boot CD 4) boot into the environment and use the hdd tools in there.. UNPLUG the working hdd before this.
use the tools to create partitions and format the discs.

hope this can help.

Tried it in safe mode? Something else might be hanging the virtual disk service that only becomes apparent accessing the uninitialised disks.

only reason why it would hang is
hdd channels clash (fixed with cable select)
or
hdd's have no formatting or partitioning (could be fixed in safe mode but suspect that it needed accessing outside the OS, i.e. UBCD4 o/s)

Might be worth checking what shows up in diskpart (assuming it's still available from a command line in Windows 7). If it shows up there (list disks) it might be worth temporarily disabling automounting (automount disable) and seeing if disk manager starts up then.

only reason why it would hang is…

You haven't worked with computers long have you? 😀

Anyway, I thought SATA was point to point so there would be no CS jumper to set, that was for multiple devices on a PATA chain. Been a while since I built a PC though.

no not long at all only 18 years.. I only manage 2 server farms and 300 desktops and 200 laptops..
not MS certified though.. I see that as a plus..

you are right though as std/modern Sata don't have jumpers (Pata/ide do have them to set as slave and master), earlier ones did though, the only jumper on a modern Sata is for data speeds (think its a 1.5 gig limiter IIRC).
edit forgot the smiley 😀 😉

Disks are partitioned, initialised NTFS and full of photos (hence moved). They are SATA so no jumpers needed, and not configured for RAID. I've found quite a few references to the error message but no useful solutions 🙁

I've not found how to control auto mounting…

i would suggest move them back to the old pc, move all the data (if you can) to one drive, basically empty one drive.

put the empty drive in to Win7, delete and re create the partitions and re format. see if that helps.

found this too on a vista forum

If you are using Home Premium, then you will not be able to use a dynamic
drive. Dynamic drives are not supported in either of the Home Editions.

as win 7 is basically vista with small changes (XML etc) i would expect the same applies.

i would suggest move them back to the old pc

already done that to make sure they weren't trashed 🙂

put the empty drive in to Win7, delete and re create the partitions and re format. see if that helps.

I've just ordered a fresh drive to experiment on!

simon reading into that vista comment where did the old drives come from?
vista home or XP (again home or pro edt)?

i think you can set/create hdds as basic in XP pro/home etc but i think you can also set them to be dynamic.

looks like if they are dynamic your going to need to move all the data off, delete the partitions, recreate them in win7 and format then move it back. there is no way to swap them back to basic once set to dynamic sadly..

I've not found how to control auto mounting…

Sorry, but given your reputation Simon, that statement is priceless! 😆

To disable automounting just type diskpart (at an admin command prompt), prompt should change to DISKPART> then type automount disable

simon reading into that vista comment where did the old drives come from?
vista home or XP (again home or pro edt)?

XP pro –> Win 7 Ultimate. They may be dynamic, I can't remember – but that could be the reason perhaps…

I've not found how to control auto mounting…

Sorry, but given your reputation Simon, that statement is priceless!

har, har, except my reputation is entirely fictitious :o)

Interestingly, even with the new drives removed, I still can't access Disk Manager. I think this must be a permissions thing, and I suspect even as admin I don't have the right access to the virtual disk server process. Why this should be is a mystery.

Yes both disks are dynamic, and Vista/7 don't seem to support such disks 🙁

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309044

Might be useful if you still have a xp box kicking about

Might be useful if you still have a xp box kicking about

yes, I came across a similar article 🙂 Once I've got it all backed up again I will do it.

I'd also be interested to see what would happen if you installed a XP VM, see whether the VM could somehow pick it up correctly…wouldn't that be fun! Be a whole layer of chaos in there somewhere 😀

edit: not saying you should do this!

if you installed a XP VM, see whether the VM could somehow pick it up correctly

yes, I wondered that 🙂

so my provisional conclusions are:
1) Win 7 doesn't recognise dynamic disks
2) 3rd party tools are required to convert them back to basic format whilst retaining the data

As you're obviously competent in google searching I daresay you may have seen this already BUT

I downloaded HxD, a disk hex editor and opened the disk in it. In sector 0, location 1C2, the value read "42." This means dynamic drive, so I changed the value to "07" and saved the changes and rebooted.

Could just open up a world of hurt tho!

yes, I came across that too, but I'm fairly sure if it were that simple it would be made readily available…

If I open my external SATA that was used in basic (I think) in XP in physical mode in HxD then 1C2 is 07, however both my disks in logical mode don't say that and my other disk doesnt say it in phyiscal mode either but that could be because it's got the OS and no other partitions on it.

update:
now I've replugged in the 1TB dynamic drive and it reads fine 😐 So I have no idea what was wrong before!

However, one of the (5) drives I've mounted is making a worrying tinkling sound which doesn't bode well 🙁

Oh, another gotcha – loading up the main drive from my old machine, folders like MyMusic don't seem to copy properly as they're aliased in from some other location somehow…