Hi all.

If you're familiar with DDO, please read on.

I had to install a DDO on all my hard drives because the motherboard I bought 6 years ago didn't support large discs, even with the latest (and final) update. It's never been a problem.

But after 6 years of planning, I built a new system this week, Asus P4P800SE motherboard, P4 3.2C cpu. Now the new board does not requre a DDO to read the discs. In fact, it cannot load the DDO.

Well one of my discs is 160 Gb. Another is 80 Gb. Both are Seagate and the DDO is seagate's also. I've tried a couple hundred tricks, but in the end, the mobo won't go past the DDO's bluescreen, where it stops:
ERROR dynamic drive overlay not loaded.

Well, Seagate's website goes on about how easy to use the DDO is. Easy to add, easy to remove. Well, in fact, I booted to Seagate's disc wizard and the option to remove the DDO is greyed out (can't be clicked). So is the option to update the DDO, and the option to upgrade disc wizard. There is really no choice. I suspect the only solution to this is to remove the DDO. But if seagate's own app doesn't do the remove, I could be looking at 160 gb of lost data.

Well, one partition of this 160, besides data, holds my XP OS. I'd like to keep it intact to avoid all the backup/restore/re-installs/downloading service packs, updating virus defs and all the nightmares of starting over. But beyond that, even if I did decide to wipe the disc, I have no fast or easy way to move 160 gb off and start over.

Ultimately, I have to find a way to either make the ASUS mobo run the DDO or a harmless way to remove the DDO.

If you've overcome this before, please share the secret with me (or any good tips). I've left email with Seagate and Asus tech support. Both gave autoresponse and promise to get back within X days. In the meantime, I'm going insane.

Of course, I was able to put the boot drive back in the old system and run it as normal, so I'm not cut off. Just anxious to see the new stuff perform.

Thanks all.

Wengang