I need to replace the system drive on my PC running win 7 64bit ultimate however when I import the foreign dymanic disks its lose's any data that it stored in folders but not those files stored on the root. If I put the old system drive back in and import the drives again it all works correctly. This leads me to believe it should work but I have no idea where to even start, Help please Simon
Your best bet is to clone the drive you're replacing if at all possible. Once the index files on the spanned disk are missing, there is nothing left for windows to know there are files stored there. You'll need the original indexes, there are ways to copy them if you can't do a full clone. Or you'll need to backup all data from both disks and recreate the whole thing. Spanned has its downsides, which you are discovering. If you end up backing everything up and starting over, I would recommend not using spanned disks, and take advantage of junction points instead.
Unfortunately I can't clone the system drive to many bad sectors and a bad case of windows rot. I'm going to buy a new 2TB drive and copy the data from the spanned disks anyway as this has brought home to me just how inadequate my backup solution has become. I've never used junction points and can't find much about using them with mac's or as a network share for a media server.
Dynamic disks require all the drives to be present to work (even the old OS drive). Pop the old drive back in. Backup all data to another drive. Start again (this time don't use dynamic disks)
