edward spurlock

“Internal Error - Disk group has no valid configuration copies”

A few nights ago, my E: drive went offline. At first, I figured I had some sort of motherboard issue — I’ve had issues with the onboard LAN and audio interfaces on my mobo (ECS P4M800PRO-M) that have required supplanting the built-in hardware with PCI cards. I restarted the PC a couple of times, then checked the power and data cables on the drive, but all to no avail. I then checked Disk Manager, and found that the only non-destructive option was to “Re-Activate” the Dynamic Disk. However, when I tried that, I got “Internal Error - Disk group has no valid configuration copies”.

I checked Microsoft’s site for that error message, but the only relevant support article noted that the fix would involve contacting Microsoft Product Support Services. I know that road, I know exactly where it ends…

Fortunately, Google found someone who’d been in my shoes before and had a recommendation: Runtime Software’s GetDataBack for NTFS. According to the GetDataBack help file,

GetDataBack will help you retrieve your files if the hard drive’s partition table, boot record, MFT, or root directory have been damaged by a virus, accidental deletion, formatting, fdisk or power failure.

GetDataBack can even recover your data when the drive is no longer recognized by Windows. It can likewise be used even if all MFT information is missing.
…
GetDataBack is safe. It is read-only, meaning the program will never attempt to write to the drive you are about to recover.

Best of all, I didn’t have to buy the program to find out if it could help — it’s possible to install the software on a trial basis, scan the problem disk, and view the files that can be recovered. It’s even possible to open files using their associated applications from inside the trial installation to verify that the desired files have not been corrupted.

Once I knew that my almost 200 GB of video data was still on the drive, I paid $79 for a license and started a new scan of the drive, which took most of an hour.  While GetDataBack was scanning the drive, I took a new 300 GB drive, installed it in an external USB enclosure, and formatted it on the same system using Disk Manager.  When the scan was finished, I copied the data from the failed drive to the new one (using GetDataBack), then re-formatted the failed drive and copied the data back to it.

The morals of my story:

• Don’t use a Dynamic Disk where a Basic Disk will do, and
• If you’re having disk problems on an NTFS-formatted disk, give GetDataBack for NTFS a try.