Cant read data in Dynamic disk

[inkognito]

Hi,
I have an AMD-64 based setup with 1gb RAM and three HDDs : One 20GB Seagate, one 160 GB Samsung and a 200 GB Seagate. Recently, I had data of almost 160 GB stored on the 200GB Seagate. It was connected as Secondary Slave. However, there was some problem with my secondary cable and I had to replace it. However, I was unable to access the HDD and by some carelessness and desperation in trying to access it, had converted it to a Dynamic Disk Drive. I have Windows XP Pro installed which is supposed to be able to read the data in a dynamic disk drive too. However, I am unable to do so and the disk shows 0 bytes in the Properties. Similarly, the drive shows up in the BIOS and even the partition shows up in Windows. But if I double click it, it says "the disk in drive is not formatted. would you like to format it now?". But, if I use a bootable CD having some recovery tools on it, I can view the files stored. Is there any way I can access the files without having to back up the files ( no place on my other HDDs and backing 160 GB on DVDs can be an incredible pain) and then deleting the partition or formatting it.

Thanks in advance
Inkognito

[deathvirus_me]

The metadata must have been deleted ... and windows won't have any idea about a drive without it .... do u have SP2 installed ???? Use a bootable cd to copy all the necessary data from that drive to ur primary hdd ... and then format it ....