Question: I upgraded to Windows 7 64 bit Home
Premium from a XP installation with two hard disks. The result is that I now cannot read
the second disk although it appears in the BIOS setup. In the Computer Management >
Disk Management, it is shown as a Dynamic Foreign disk with no other information. How
the drive got the dynamic status is a puzzle to me. I know that the Vista Home cannot
read dynamic disks and I assume that the same applies to Windows 7. My problem is how
can I read the data that is on this disk?
Why dynamic disk showing foreign?
When you move a dynamic disk from one computer to another one which does not support
dynamic disk, such as all Windows home editions, and then the dynamic disk created
on previous computer will be flagged as a foreign disk in Disk Manager. On the other
hand, if your computer is dual-boot and one of the operating system does not support
dynamic disk, the status of the disk will also be shown as foreign disk.

How to access foreign dynamic disk?
When you right click the disk, there are two available options: Import Foreign Disk
or Convert to Basic Disk.
To allow the disk to be recognized by the current installation of Volume Manager, you
need to add the disk to your computer's system configuration by right-click on
the disk and select Import Foreign Disks. Any existing volumes on the foreign disk
will be visible and accessible when you import the disk.
Because some versions of Windows cannot access dynamic disk, you need to revert
dynamic disk to basic by right click the foreign disk and select "Convert to
Basic Disk". You have to know this operation will wipe out all the data on the
disk. If you want to convert dynamic disk to basic without data loss and even manage basic and dynamic
disk well, please refer to following content.
To convert dynamic disk to basic
AOMEI Partition Assistant professional is a piece of powerful disk partition management
software developed by AOMEI Technology, which is widely used in Windows 8.1,
Windows 8, Windows 7, Vista, XP, 2000, both 32 bit and 64 bit. It provides you with
the most popular disk partition technology which enables you to convert dynamic disk
to basic and vice versa.
Step1: Download
and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. According to the picture showing
below, it is observed that AOMEI has a clean and intuitive surface, with the
functions available listed on the left and menu items listed on the top. Now click
All Tools-> Dynamic Disk Converter in the left
panel.

Step2: In the new pop up window, click Next to
continue.
Step3: As you can see from the following screenshot, there are two
options. Since we are going to convert a dynamic disk to basic disk, we simply
choose Method 1. (If you need to convert a dynamic volume to basic, then you can
choose Method 2.)
Method 1: Convert a dynamic disk back to basic disk. Safely,
directly and time-saving (only take 3-10 seconds) revert a dynamic disk back to
basic disk without losing data.
Method
2: Convert any dynamic volume to basic partition. Clone simple volume,
spanned volume, striped volume, mirrored volume and RAID-5 volume from dynamic to
basic disk sector by sector.
Step4: Tick the disk which you want to convert and then click
Next to continue.
Step5: Confirm your operation and then click
Proceed.
Step6: AOMEI Dynamic Disk Converter will notice you as soon as the
operation has been completed. Click OK ->
Finish to end this operation.
After the operation is completed, you need to click OK to restart
your computer in order to bring the conversion operation into effect. As a
matter of fact, AOMEI Partition Assistant can help you convert GPT disk to MBR without
losing data. Other helpful features like Migrate OS to SSD, Windows To Go Creator,
Create Bootable Media, etc. are come with this software as well.