I've found the solution thx to msfn.org:
1. Vista only supports Dynamic drives in Business and Ultimate - not Home
Premium. I upgraded from XP Pro to Home Premium. Try to find out where
Microsoft tells you that Premium doesn't support dynamic drives - I couldn't.
Microsoft wanted me to upgrade to Ultimate for an additional $ 169 . . . I
didn't want to.
2. It turns out that unless you are really using the features of dynamic
drives you can easily switch them back to basic (so Vista can see them)
without data loss.
The instructions are right here (forget the ad):
http://thelazyadmin.com/index.php?/a...sic-Disks.html
The trick is to find diskprobe.exe. I took it out of the support cabinet on
my old Windows 2000 disk. If you are running Vista you can not download it
from Microsoft. Best bet is to pull it off an old windows disk.
It worked perfectly and was really really simple. Be sure to 'run as
administrator' when you run the software.
I hope this saves everyone lots of time (and money).
"Siggy" wrote:
> ok, well i've installed windows 2003 and vista on separate partitions while
> the dynamic disks have been disconnected during the installation.
> now the thing is, I have successfully imported these dynamic disks into
> windows 2003, but vista still refuses to do this.
> Disk mgmt console sees that the disks are dynamic and "offline", using
> diskpart to bring them online gives me the error that "onlining objects in
> the pack associated with the disk" failed.
> what can I do to have the dynamic disks visible within vista AND w2003 ?
>
> "Stephen" wrote:
>
> > On Fri, 2 Feb 2007 00:39:01 -0800, Siggy
> > <Siggy@discussions.microsoft.com> had a flock of green cheek conures
> > squawk out:
> >
> > >what will happen with them after I have wiped XP and installed Vista?
> > >Currently I have two spanned volumes with a LOT of data on them
> >
> > Make sure you have a usable backup. If you format any partition on
> > the system you can loose access to any dynamic partition since Windows
> > stores the info it needs to access a dynamic partition on other
> > partitions. Make sure you have a usable backup.
> >
> > Stephen
> > --
> >