This morning, my laptop wouldn't boot and I got a message saying I needed to use the recovery disk to fix the problem. A little investigating using the command prompt from that disk revealed my system and data partitions had no drive letter assigned to them. A little work with Diskpart fixed that but left me wondering what would have caused them to disappear.
View 1 RepliesI'm just going through the process of personalizing a new Inspiron 14z with Windows 8. The one thing that has me stumped are all the partitions that ship installed on the drive, due to a combination of everything being different on Win8, Dell doing things their own way, and GPT formatting. Generally I would like to know what the heck all those partitions are for, but it's fine if that will be a slow learning process. Specifically and immediately, I need to change the drive letter assigned to the "WINRETOOLS" partition. Currently it's D:, and the problem is that for 10 years I've been using D: as my data partition, and quite a number of applications, configurations, settings, etc. assume that all my files are on D:. For instance, by having all my music on D:, I can sync iTunes library and preference files between machines, and all ratings and playlists match from one machine to the next. Same thing for my photos. Same thing for a bunch of utilities like FTP consoles, sync utilities...
In a prior version of Windows, I would just go into Disk Management, right click the partition in question, assign a different drive letter, and job done. On my machine, the 2GB WINRETOOL partition doesn't even show as having a drive letter in Disk Management, despite the fact that it's D: in Win Explorer. Additionally, the only right click option is "help". I've taken that option, and, despite its aspirations, it's not useful.
How can I change that drive letter to something else? Should WINRETOOLS even have a drive letter in Explorer (some posts I've seen indicate that it should be hidden)? If I do manage to change the drive letter, will that break its function, whatever that is?
My machine has a 500GB spinning disk, which has all the aforementioned partitions. I've shrunk the C: partition to 80GB, in preparation for creating a data partition. I have not yet formatted the unassigned space as I would like to solve this WINRETOOLS thing first. Finally, there is a 32GB SSD that I've set up as an Intel Smart Response cache, and it's no longer visible to the OS.
I am trying to get my external hard drives setup from a freshly rebooted installed computer. I recently placed an external hard drive with all my back up files on my computer, but this drive is not going to be my main drive. I have two others I will be using as a main hdd and a backup drive that are brand new.
So, the question is, if I were to use a utility like the Windows 8.1 disk management feature to either delete the drive letter or even change it to another one, will that mess up the external hard drive or even lose data? Because until I transfer my files to my backup disk I am afraid of losing my only copy of my files.
I'm booting off my SSD which is drive C: and I have games and programs on an extra hard drive which was origanally drive H: but after a restart it switched to I: and when I go into Disk Management to change it Drive H: isn't there.
View 3 Replies View RelatedWhen I put my usb in my pc I see on my Computer a new drive letter H:
So now I have: C: D: E:
Floppy: A: and my DVD as F: and a Removeable disk I: but I don't have a any removeable disk on any usb port in my pc.
When I put now my other usb it's assigining it as drive H:
But I need it to be G: since I need to save to it something from a program I saved before and it must be G: not H:
How can I change/force it to be drive letter G: instead H: ?
My C: is a SSD Id like to have back as one disc, one partition..
The 101 mb 'unallocated' It was previously listed as " reserved system protected drive" I removed and formatted its 101 mb...back to empty, unallocated, can I lose that partition??
It shows up under disc management as a part of c...but really has no drive letter at all it just shows as C:
I have a windows to go installation in a large external hdd, so I have made a second partition to use as data storage.
Now, when I insert the disk on my "normal" windows installation I would expect the data partition to be available... Instead I have to assign a letter to be able to use it.
The disk appears to be online and once assigned a letter you can unplug it and plug it again without having to do the letter assignment again.
BUT, every time I restart the pc I have to do it all over again.
That is, I can allocate it one through drive management but it still doesn't show next switch on in My Computer, so I must go in an allocate it one. Otherwise it works fine. Bit tedious after a while.
Do I have to reformat it completely to regain auto allocation of a letter?
Used to be fine, but not now. A USB 3.0 Toshiba 500 gig external drive (sealed unit) doesn't have this problem.
After last "patch-tuesday" my Windows 8.1 don't assign drive letters to hotswaped HDD's and USB keys.
When starting my backupdrive (eSATA), it is now without a drive letter, I can give it one though in disk-management, but before last tuesday, it was given a letter automatic. Same problem when I connect an USB-HDD or an USB-stick.
Is there a way to get back "autoassign of a drive letter"? (don't know the correct word for this function in English).
When I go to Computer Management my main (OS) drive shows as "Disk 1" and my 2nd internal data drive shows as "Disk 0". Should I switch the SATA cables so that the main drive will show as "Disk 0 and the 2nd internal drive as "Disk 1"?
View 5 Replies View RelatedI am having a little trouble with windows disk management. I'm running a custom built rig with a 250GB SSD for OS & Programs, and a 2TB HDD for everything else. The hard drive was previously partitioned however I recently removed these partitions and Extended the main volume to fill the drive, however it is showing up as 3 distinct volumes in disk management (See attached screenshot). They're also Green from some reason and the disk is showing as a 'Dynamic' disk, which I don't remember changing.
View 5 Replies View RelatedI have a Dell XPS-12 laptop. It's pretty standard, and I only use it for school. I'm a Computer Science major (which is incredibly ironic in this situation... wow), and I partitioned part of my harddrive off, about 32 GB, for a CentOS and then Kali Linux install, first to run a configuration and write some custom code for an open source captive portal my work has deployed and second for testing my place of employments security implementation (boy was it easy to gather some scary data with a simple wireshark capture..). I am extremely busy with being a fulltime student and also working 2 jobs and freelancing web development, and I haven't been able to figure out why after reformatting the partition I was using for the Linux installs, I could never reintegrate that partition into my own Windows partition. It's incredibly annoying as I only have a 128 GB SSD and after screwing with it for ten minutes, said screw it and just made it into a backup drive where I keep all my code and larger ISO images for different OS' I have (after just a year of studying CS, I've had to use a total of 6 different Linux OS', as well as messing with trying to get an ArchLinux install up and running correctly... I'm starting to feel like a collector)
why my harddrive is being super lame and finish that matrix for the Software Packaging class' final it's pretty obvious which I'm going to go with. Problem is, now, I'm starting to do a bit of freelance security consulting here and there, and I need to have a portable Kali partition with me. I also need to shrink the partition, but when I do I can never put it back into my main Windows partition so there really is no point.
Also, I'm running windows 8.0 right now, but I've had 8.1 before and the fixes still didn't work.
I have a 1TB backup HDD that is dynamic and full. I have a new HDD that I wish to use to extend this drive.
Is there a way to do this?
When I installed Win8 (at this point, updated to Win8.1 Update) on drive V:, it changed it to C:. Since I'm used to the drive letters as they used to be, I'd like to change it back to V:. I figure I'll have to change all the registry entries for installed programs from C: to V:.
How to confirm that I'll have to manually make those registry changes?
Alright, I just installed my Windows 8 Pro from a USB drive as I was installing it I was installing Windows 8 on the W:/ drive but once it was installed I came to found out that that My C:/ drive which was originally Windows 7's drive letter now belongs to Windows 8, and now the drive that is now Windows 7's is D:/ is is possible to change it back a W: drive or something? and yes, Windows 7 is the main partition on the system, I'm not sure why it changed but it's actually the first time this has happened.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI've installed Windows 8 starting the installer from Windows 8 RP and I've just noticed that it picked up the drive letters from the old system. Now my system drive is Y instead of C , because in the old system that partition was Y. If I try to change the drive letter in the Drive Management it gives an error. how to change system drive letter in Windows 8 RTM?
View 6 Replies View RelatedI tried to change the drive letter because it wont appear, but it didnt work. I have tried the CMD method with the volumes but the volume did not show up. All I know is that its a G-Technology hard drive. I tried formatting it to NTFS but that wont work. Basically I tried everything and nothing works. P.S The drive is Disk1...
View 2 Replies View RelatedI have an SSD drive with 2 partitions on it. 1st partition has Win 7 on it as drive letter C. 2nd Partition has Win 8 on it as Drive letter W. At 1 point in time if I booted to Win 8 the drive letter would dynamically change from drive letter W to Drive letter C and make Win 7 drive letter W. The revers was true if I booted to Win 7. Something has changed somewhere, where this dynamic drive letter changing is no longer working. When I boot to Win 8 the drive letter remains to be drive letter W & Win 7 is still drive C. This is causing problems when I'm booted to Win 8 with regard to installing & using apps while in Win 8 since the C drive is really the Win 7 system drive.
How can I fix this to get back the dynamic flip flopping of drive C? I confess to being somewhat ignorant when dealing with this particular area of things.
I just recently built a new Windows 8 machine. Since I knew I was going to be getting an SSD down the road, I planned ahead:
Nutshell, the C: drive, the boot drive, is at the end of the partition, sized to 220 DB, so I knew it would be smaller than the 240/256GB drive I knew I'd eventually be getting. The Users folder is on the D: drive, so the C: partition is only the OS and apps. Everything's dandy.
I found EasyBCD and used it to move the boot manager over into the C: partition, so theoretically that's all I need to move over to the new drive. So what I want to do is move the C: partition over to the SSD, have it stay C: once it's there, and then have it boot into that partition. (Note that I cannot disconnect the hard drive when it's time to reboot because that's where the Users folder lives and I don't want to break that.)
I keep running into problems with the "keeping it C" part. When I clone the drive over, the old drive stays as C: (as you would expect), and the new drive gets a new letter. Attempts to change those letters using DISKPART from the Win 8 install DVD have been either futile or disastrous.
I've been using the free version of Macrium as my cloning / imaging tool...is there a better free tool I should be using?
My windows 8 partition is inaccessible. Win 8 won't boot, even after attempted repair and running chkdsk.
This all happened after an automatic update.
I booted to another drive. Windows explorer shows the bad partition letter but no size or contents. Other partitions on the same drive are ok.
I also can see the bad drive contents from a cmd prompt.
I bought a new 2 tb hard drive and I am going to transfer the windows 8 partitions to the new drive when I get it. How can I do this ? My soon to be old drive is 500 gb . What about using hard drive cloning softwares ? Do imaging softwares work ?
View 8 Replies View RelatedCombine Two Partitions In Windows 8
if you look at the second post it states
"3) You actually *CAN* combine partitions, and that is *NOT* the way to do it."
When I want to turn on BitLocker on C drive (for some reason I can't do it on other drives) I get this message:
What should I do in order to enable BitLocker for not only C drive, but all of my partitions?
Which encryption is BitLocker using?
This is when I tried to install a fresh OS (Windows 8 Enterprise N) into an acer laptop with a config, i3, 4gb, 500gb, win7 ult. I can't delete or re-create any of the drive partitions. The options are disabled there.I first thought it might be a problem with the compatibility of the hardware with the Win8 operating system. So I tried to boot with win7 OS installation to delete all the partitions, but no use, got same problem with win7 too.
No partitions are being deleted. So I started the system with the old win7 OS (installed in the system), from the disc management option deleted all the drives except drive C (of course the OS will not let me format or delete drive C ). and then reboot with the Win8 installation, created 2 new partitions, formatted C drive and then installed the OS. I needed to change the C drive partition size but I couldn't.
Your computer was not assigned an address from the network (from the DHCP server) for the network card. The following error occurred 0x79. Your computer will continue to try to obtain an address on its own from the network address (DHCP) server.
View 3 Replies View RelatedMy PC has a 2tb hard drive with two partitions, currently I install my gaming programs on the same partition as the operating system.
If I installed them on the second partition would that impact on graphic performance.
Is it may orientates how to add permissions for users who log on using the server?
In Windows 7, they were more stricter for example when user want install programs.
Is there a program that such causes can block the installation of programs, or hide the drives on your computer? It can be installed on a server or locally - with indifference.
I heard something about a Microsoft program, which was in the name of "policy", but unfortunately I can not find it.
Another matter. How a computer (model) duplicate to the other 20? For a backup? By the server? I mean, I do not have to install the 19 remaining, but install programs, just as soon as cloned together with all the settings.
1 year ago I had a desktop PC with two HDD in it, one is 500GB,the other is 1TB. I bought the PC with only the 500GB HDD in it, but after buying the 1TB HDD, I always installed OSes in it. For many time I didn't get any problem, until I accidently swapped the plugs for the HDDs after I cleaned the cabinet. My Windows 7 wouldn't boot even though I had did "nothing". I realised my problem and just swapped it again and the problem was gone. After reading about it, I learned that it was caused because of the MBR, which was on the 500GB HDD. No problem till MY PC died and my family ran into money problem which prevented me from buying a new PC so I started using a netbook for everyday PC use. I had to trow out all my PC hardware, except for my two HDD which I kept safe in my wardrobe.
The thing is, I have all my precious music, games and stuff on those HDD, so, since I don't have the money to build a new PC, I instead bought a IDE/SATA to USB converter, which worked fine on the 500GB HDD. Problem is when I plug the 1TB HDD, which won't allow me to open the partitions (even though they show perfectly both on My Computer and on Computer Management). On Computer Management, they all show as RAW partitions, I don't know what to do. I know some programs will only recover files from they extensions, but I would like to have all my files untouched, the way they were, so I could back up important files on my netbook, and let the HDD alone waiting for the day that I can finally buy a new PC.
i have been having this problem for a week now until a friend told me about your form three of my partitions are missing from my computer and this what it shows me in the device manager
View 5 Replies View RelatedI recently set up Windows 8.1 on a new SSD (as GPT). While I'm aware that Windows automatically creates its necessary extra small partitions for recovery, I just realized that my secondary HDD which I also formatted as GPT has these extra partitions. This secondary HDD was the one shipped on my laptop that used to have Win 8 preinstalled so maybe its remnants of that.
My question is (and I hope this is the right forum to ask): Are those partitions only necessary if the said hard drive contains the OS? In other words, can I delete them since this is a secondary drive?
I have a laptop that crashed over the weekend. I need to do a restore on the computer but before I do I need to get the documents and pictures off of the drive. I've taken the drive out of the laptop and plugged it into my Windows 7 desktop using an external USB bay. I hear the computer detect the drive but it will never show up as a drive. If I look in Computer Management it shows up in there.
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