Unable To Assign Drive Letter To Sata Dynamic Hard Disk?
May 26, 2012
I formatted and installed windows 7 64 bit in a pc which previously had windows 7 32 bit. When i booted my 1tb dynamic disk was not detected. So I went into disk management and it had listed my disk as "Foreign Disk". So i imported the foreign disk.
The drive was detected and opened. So i rebooted the pc but now the drive is still not appearing in my computer. When i go to disk management the 1tb appears but there is no drive letter assigned. When i try to assign drive letter it statest that "Specified File cannot be found"
I was asked by a client to get data off a circa 2004 PC that has a blown Power Supply. I removed the HDD and proceeded with my usual recovery procedure using a drive adapter cable and power supply. The problem is that I can see the drive in the Win7 Disk Manager, but I can't mount the partition. Most of the time I've not had problems with Win7. It usually just recognizes the drive and assigns a letter to the active primary partition. In this case, I can see the partition, it's active and healthy, but I can't assign it a letter. In fact, all options are "greyed out" except "Delete Partition."I've also used MiniTool Partition Wizard, but without success. Partition Wizard can assign a letter to the partition, which then shows up in Windows Explorer. If you click on the drive letter, you get the "J:\ refers to a location that is unavailable ...." I can explore the partition with Partition Wizard, but I'm unable to access the files.
Here are the Hardware particulars:Old HDD: 80GB Maxtor HDD ATA, formatted with 76GB primary partition, Active, NTFS, This was the boot drive for a PC I'm using Win7 x64. The drive is connected to my machine using a SATA/IDE Combo Drive adapter connected to a USB port on my machine. It uses the standard USB to SATA Serial Bridge Driver.
somehow my hard disk partition became dynamic. i formatted system and insttaled windows 7 ultimate in the dynamic disk partition. from then onwards system is not booting. only black screen with cursor on the upper left corner of the black screen.
if i am not wrong windows 7 cannot boot with dynamic disk. i will have to go to the disk management and after conversion of dynamic disk to basic disk with deleting all the volumes (data). it is possible to boot with windows 7.
but system is not booting...not opening..so i cannot go to disk management.
hrad disk is showing some partitions with system reserved. except system reserved all the partitions are shwoing dynamic. and in only one partition formatting option and installing OS option is coming while i booting system with OS DVD.
reinstalltion through OS DVD is possble by booting through OS DVD. but in advanced option repartition option is not coming. the one partition in which i installed OS previously, only in that formatting option is coming. in other partition neither formating option is coming nor extend.
My C: and a couple of other partitions come up fine, but some are missing.I go into Disk Management to assign a drive letter to these parititions but I get an error."The operation failed to complete because the Disk Management console view is not up to date. Refresh the view using the Refresh Task. If the problem persists close the Disk Management console, then restart Disk Management, or restart the computer."I've tried refreshing and restarting with no luck.I went into Vista and it shows the same thing, unassigned drives and no luck assigning a letter.
My windows 7 installation won't assign a drive letter to disc drives and manually trying in the device manager doesn't work either. This is also the same for virtual and external drives, it doesn't assign a letter for either...
I tried the auto fix from Micro$oft but it didn't work: [URL]
790i ftw QX9650 GTX285x2 6gbRam dual ssd and raptors but doesnt run games
I have Win 7 home premium on an HP laptop with 4 usb ports. I have 2 Western Digital Elements 1.5 TB drives for backups. If I plug in one of the drives, Win assigns a drive letter, but if I add the second one it doesn't.
To troubleshoot, I've plugged each drive into every usb port on the laptop, and each port reads each drive alone, but if I plug in the second drive while the first is still in, it shoes up in devices but does not get a drive letter. I tried assigning a different drive letter to the device plugged in first, but Win still doesn't assign a letter to the second drive.
I had a Mac laptop that MB crashed. I had a 3rd party turn the HD into an external drive for me so that I could access the data from it. However, when trying to hook it up to my Windows 7 pc, it is not showing in Win Explorer. After reading a few posts, a lot of people are recommending reformatting or other options that I'm afraid will destroy the data. The drive is shown in my Disk Management window as "Basic", "Healthy" and "Online", just no Drive letter?
I have a USB external hard drive that I keep all my documents etc on (had it for years)I upgraded from Vista Home to & Home Premium then had to upgrade recently to Professional to run my Sage. Through all these upgrades my ext. drive ran fine. Occasionally the drvie letter would change if I had something else plugged into the USB, this was always easily corected in disk management by changing the drive path.The connection on the case packed up so I had to get the drive put into a new case, now when I plug it in the drive is assigned G instead of F, I tried to change the drive letter allocation in Disk Management but it won't let me as the program still thinks I have a second ext. hard drive which is labelled F. I suspect this has happened because when the usb connection broke the drive was disconnected suddenly instead of a proper eject.How do I get Disk Management to remove the inactive drive - i can't find any obvious way - eject, delete etc are all missing when I click on tools or tasks.
I recently embarked on the journey of building my first custom PC. Everything was going well, until I hit a speed bump of installing Windows 7 64 bit. So like usual I boot from the CD drive, and stick Windows 7 in. When it gets to the point where I'm going to install, it is unable to find my SATA drive to install Windows 7 on.
It then asks me to "locate drivers." So it gives me an option to browse, and when it does so I put in the disk that came with my mobo, but it's unable to find any drivers. I tried downloading drivers from my motherboard's web site, sticking them on an external HD, and locating them from there, but that still didn't work.
I checked in my BIOS, and my SATA type is under Native IDE. I tried switching it to AHCI, and my HD was no longer detected in the BIOS, switched back to Native IDE and it found it again. Also, Onchip IDE Channel is set to Disabled, and Onchip SATA Control is set to Enabled, does this matter any?
I was wondering,though, is it possible that if I set the SATA type to AHCI, move the SATA cables into ports so that the drive is recognized by my BIOS, use the AHCI drivers I downloaded, Windows 7 will detect it?
I have a Dell Inspiron 1545 laptop. I recently developed hard drive trouble and have had to order a replacement.Instead of installing Windows 7 all over again, with all the drivers, etc., I want to clone my existing hard drive to the new one.I intend to connect one of the hard drives to my system via a USB SATA cable with the other drive connected inside my system.
I lost my Event Viewer, and had to do a repair installation to fix it. Unfortunately, during the repair install, Windows decided to rename my second HD as the D: drive... it was K: before that. Now I cannot access any of my docs, pictures, music, or videos through the normal means... they don't show up in libraries or explorer, and apps like Restorator and Sure Thing (CD labeler) cannot find them. I think that means the paths are broken..?
It won't allow me to rename the HD back into K: (it's not listed as available). I can access the data by clicking Computer > D, and I can see the data is there, but its unusable as of now. Any ideas?
I am running Windows 7 Pro. Have a external dual dock connected to a estata port. One of the drives assigned letter K often comes up as E and I have to change as application is looking for K. Another disk in this dock works fine. No problems. why this might be happening or anyway to prevent? Seems like when I go to disk management and assign K it should stay that way.
so i got this cool Hp laptop... nice the bad part ... I had a single 500 gb Hard disk. only two partitions ... experimented to partition it ... 1. I upgraded my basic drive to dynamic drive ( got four partitions now) 2. My OS (win 7 home premium x64) is on one of the partiotion on the dynamic disk. QUESTIONS How do i convert back to basic... i only have my OS key no install cd? Can i take a back up or sys image that i can use later on after converting my hard disk to basic?
somehow my hard disk partition became dynamic. i formatted system and insttaled windows 7 ultimate in the dynamic disk partition. from then onwards system is not booting. only black screen with cursor on the upper left corner of the black screen.
if i am not wrong windows 7 cannot boot with dynamic disk. i will have to go to the disk management and after conversion of dynamic disk to basic disk with deleting all the volumes (data). it is possible to boot with windows 7.
but system is not booting...not opening..so i cannot go to disk management. hrad disk is showing some partitions with system reserved. except system reserved all the partitions are shwoing dynamic.
and in only one partition formatting option and installing OS option is coming while i booting system with OS DVD. reinstalltion through OS DVD is possble by booting through OS DVD. but in advanced option repartition option is not coming.
the one partition in which i installed OS previously, only in that formatting option is coming. in other partition neither formating option is coming nor extend.
Originally got message - Disk read error occurred press ctl alt del to restart. Then tried plugging this drive using a USB connector into my desktop PC to see if I could run some chkdsk. Then my desktop PC displayed messages telling me my firewall and virus software had been turned off and the computer crashed. ROOTKIT? So I was left with 2 drives not working. I re installed windows on desktop but using ISO on flash drive BUT can't on the 500GB Hitachi HTS545050B9SA00 for some reason. Windows setup loaded and Deleted old partitions and formatted. When I tried to install, it froze. It now just boots up with a windows loading screen and I'm also unable to boot from flash drive as it freezes. This is on a Sony Vaio VPCEB4E4E.
My laptop is Acer with Windows 7 home premium 64 bit OS. It contain only 1 single partition disk that is c drive only.Recently, i accidentally convert the c drive which contain OS into dynamic disk.After i restart the laptop, it shows the following: BootMgr is missing Please press Alt, Ctrl +del to restart Now, i not able to enter the window. I am so worry because my important data is kept inside the hard disk, and i still not yet do any back up copy on it.I searching on this forum and learnt that i need a window 7 installation disk to repair it, but my problem is the computer dealer not give me any windows 7 installation disk when i baught this laptop as their said all the driver and windows program already kept in side the harddisk.I tried to remove the laptop hardisk which is a 500GB toshiba SATA hardisk. Then, i use the other laptop with Windows XP professional with the intention to copy yhe file inside the toshiba hard disk.However, after plugged in the hard disk to the other laptop, under the disk management, it shows that the toshiba disk as : dynamic disk, unreadable.i having problem to backup the data inside the toshiba hard disk.....
My backup software's profile database is expecting to backup to H:, which was the drive letter for my external backup drive back in XP. This drive comes up in Windows 7 as K, because Windows 7 has given my four usb card reader drives the letters F,G,H,I.
Disk Management will not show these four card reader drives unless media is inserted (connected vs. disconnected). I have changed the letters for F,G,I to T,U,W, but only because I have those types of cards (SD, CF, MS)...I do not have an XD or SmartMedia card for the one dang drive I really need to change.
What are my options, other than buying the cheapest SM card I can find to make the drive visible for this task? The SmartSyncPro database has many profiles, so remapping all those to point to K would be a major hassle.
I have a second internal hard drive with data. Currently it is the slave. I have tried cable select with the same result. Disk management sees the drive but I cant assign it a letter. All options under Task -> All options are greyed out except delete volume. How do I give it a letter so I can access the data?.
I have a virus infected sata hard drive with windows 7 on it. It has the win 7 anti virus 2012 on it, and it's a cybercriminal virus. I have lots of files I want to transfer to the new sata drive. I already have windows 7 installed on the new drive. How do I get the files from the bad drive to the new one?
I have an *.iso file on my hard disc.What is the easiest was to map this �.iso file to a (free) driver letter (e.g. M ?I don't want to burn it on a DVD and access it in my DVD drive? Is there a Win7 built-in way?
I have built a computer for video editing and named the hard drives (C for the main drive, (M for the drive holding my music, (P for the drive for photos, and I named the drive to store my videos (V. However when I tried to write path to the V: drive I was told V: is an invalid path, I suppose because of the confusion with a followed by a / which would give you a / which can be confused with V but is not exactly the same. I went to My Computer and right clicked on the V: drive and clicked on "rename" in the drop down menu and changed the name to "Storage" but the (V persisted. Then I renamed again and named the drive "Storage (S" and now in "My Computer" the drive is shown as "Storage (S (V" When writing a path to put videos on this drive can I use either S:/ or V:/ to get videos into this drive? Is there some way to remove the (V
In order to download the Diablo 3 Beta to my hard drive, I had to change its letter from B to E (D3 doesn't allow hard drives named A or B... sigh). When I finished downloading D3, I switched the name back to B, and now all of my desktop and start menu icons have been replaced with the white icon you get when the path is unknown (yet all of the shortcuts still work when clicked on). When I would go into the properties menu, I tried to "change" the icons back to their normal ones, but it wouldn't work (changing them to any of the standard Windows icons worked, but trying to change them back to their default ones wouldn't go). Any thoughts? It's really frustrating.
I have an external HDD that works on any other machine I test it on, except mine. It was working and for some reason I recently needed to use it and it didn't work. It appears in device manager but not in disk management. A drive letter might not be assigned to it, I can't see it in disk management to assign a drive letter to it.
Windows 7, 32 bit, 12 partitions on 3 hdd's, Windows 7 on C:
When migrating to Windows 7 I first tried to update my Vista which I had used happily for 2 years. Installation went fine, but there were too many problems after.
So I bought a new 1 GB hdd and installed Windows 7 there from scratch. It is on a partition with drive letter C. I copied most of my old partitions to the new hdd, went fine.
When trying to delete one of the old hdd's with EASEUS Partition Master Home 4.1.1 manager software, there is one partition on it (which once before was called C, then successfully renamed to Z ) which I can't delete. I has on it the following folders:
$RECYCLE.BIN
Boot
System Volume Information (locked)
-->and files:
BOOTSECT.BAK
bootmgr
They are only 30,5 MB in size. So I resized the partition to 1 GB.
EASEUS characterizes it as Status = System, Pri/Log = Primary. Windows Disc manager characterizes it as System, Active, Primary Partition.
My question is: Can I change the drive letter from Z to B without risking the whole system to be unbootable? (and maybe never be bootable again?) When trying I just get the usual Windows warning. I would be most grateful for an answer explaning what and why or why not.
Yesterday night I finally got the time around to finish the fresh installation of Windows 7, and I created a hard link for both my "Program Files" and "Program Files (x86)" using the command prompt in the Windows 7 installation disk.
The hard link points to another partition(E:) which I use to store Program Files purely. However, at the time of creating the hard link using the Windows 7 Installation disc, the volume letters were different than what it was in Windows. Now when I tried to access my files from Windows, it would give me an error. To better illustrate the problem,
The image above shows the hard link in (C:) and the volume which I link to (E:)
The image above shows the hard link and the directory it links to in E:. Notice that the Internet Explorer 8 on taskbar is no longer available. On the other hand, when I tried to install Firefox on "C:Program Files (x86)", it would be put in "C:ProgramData" which appears to be a new backup system that Microsoft used in case "Program Files" folder was deleted.
I know I'm in for another re-install, but what should I do to make the hard links work properly?
So I can't change the drive letter. Do I need to use Partition Magic again? The more I keep hearing/reading "do you have a backup?" - makes me believe the tool (OS) isn't capable of handling/accessing the data properly.
