I downloaded and installed Mirror XP Pro. But the option to mirror the disk is grayed out. I'm using XP SP3. Should I follow the manual instructions instead?
Yes, If you have SP3 and the files that need to be replaced have been updated to a later version the files in the installation will not replace them and the newer versions of the files will still be present. You will need to handle the installation manually so that you can replace the newer files with the ones that need to be installed.
I tried to the automatic method again actually. Now I get the BSOD and the drive comes up as invalid when connected to another machine. The dynamic disk conversion process failed apparently.
Did the BSOD happen in the Dynamic Disk Conversion?
Is this the main disk or the second (mirrored) disk?
The BSOD happened after rebooting. It doesn't show up as a dynamic disk. It's the main disk. I can't assign a drive letter to it now. It doesn't appear in disk manager either.
It does not appear in drive Manager on another machine? That does not appear to be a software issue. Can you run diagnostics on the HD?
A bad/corrupt driver will not cause the hardware not to be seen...
What manufacturers HD do you have in your machine?
It was a dynamic disk. It just wasn't be recognized. I converted it back and got it working again. I decided to use a RAID controller card instead.
It was recognized... It was probably being mirrored. You should not have seen it in the same machine. That way you could not use it accidentally.
That doesn't explain the BSOD on the original machine.
What was the error in the BSOD?
I don't recall. It blinked so fast. I can't find entries for it in the event viewer either. It happened after converting to dynamic disk.
You should turn off automatic restart on error so that the error message stays on the screen until you restart manually. That way you can see what the problem is in the future in case of BSOD's