It is common these days for someone to move a hard disk between two computers. When you move a dynamic disk from one computer to another, the status will appear as “foreign” within the Disk Management console. You will be unable to access any data on the disk until you import the disk into the computer’s system configuration.

If you have moved a dynamic disk from one computer to another, you can use the steps below to import it. The steps below assume that you have already physically added the foreign disk to the computer.

1. Click Start, right click Computer and click Manager.
2. Click Storage
3. Click Disk Management.
4. From the Action menu, click Rescan Disks.
5. Right click the disk marked as Foreign and click Import Foreign Disks.
6. Follow the onscreen instructions to complete the process.

You should now be able to access the data that is stored on the new disk. The important point to remember any time you remove or add a physical type to a computer is that you have to open the Disk Management console and select the Rescan Disks option from the Action menu. And on that note, you should now be able to tackle many disk management tasks.

[tags]vista, basic disk, dynamic disk, windows, microsoft, partition, volume, drive[/tags]