Setup Installation :: Disk Management - Alternative Drive Hidden?
May 27, 2014
Have 2 hard drives (SSDs).
Drive 1 : OS Win 8.1 for general web, office and junk running
Drive 2 : OS Win 8.1 for tweaked hobby work; Audio recording etc
Whilst I wish to not physically disconnect the drives on each boot. I would like to have the alternative drive hidden and not impacted when the other drive is running for the OS.Boot up from Drive 1 this currently shows as Drive C: and the secondary drive with the OS installed as D:
Boot up from Drive 2 this currently shows as Drive C: and the secondary drive with the OS installed as D:
End aim
Boot up from Drive 1 this currently shows as Drive C: and the secondary drive with the OS installed not running or showing on the system and vice versa. Is the online offline function what I need to use or is this going to put the drive offline for the system as a whole.
The program Acronis True Image failed when attempting to clone win 8.1 C drive. The destination disk is now hidden in File Explorer but is present in Disk Management (and in Device Manager). The Disk Management command "Change Drive Letter ..." is grayed out. How can I unhide the drive?
The drive in question appears in attached screen shots as Disk 6 but is missing from Explorer.
I have read some threads other info about shrinking the c drive where the os is,but none have ever said that it cannot be shrunken using the windows provided disk management but seems to talk around it?
I have a Western Digital external hard drive. Model WD5000C032 500GB. It's an older device that was working just fine on my Mac (I don't know what OS it was running and do not have access to it any longer). I have brought this HD with me and am now trying to use it on my Windows 8.1 lap top. When I plug it in, the device is not assigned a letter. I can search for it in disk management, but it is uninitialized. I have right clicked on the drive to initialize, and receive an error message "the specific disk is not convertible because the size is less than the minimum size required for GPT disks." I searched and suggestion is downloading and using Partition Wizard. I downloaded the program and opened the wizard, but it does not see my hard drive. The screen shot will display as far as I've gotten.
I was going to reinstalling windows on my computer and i thought put 200gb for windows 8 and and 1300gb can be for windows 7(for gaming), So i install windows 8 and shrink the hard drive size so windows 8 has 200gb. And use windows 7 for gaming but my pc is a bit s#*t and a dont do gaming any more. (only on the ps3).
So can i unshrink or something so i have 1.5tb together for windows 8?
Over the last couple days, I built a new PC and installed windows 8.1. Initially I had some issues installing windows, so I unplugged all my drives except the SSD and DVD. I installed windows to my SSD.
Everything works great!
Now I started adding my drives back in 1 at a time. When I plugged my 2nd SSD in, it showed up in BIOS, but not in Disk Management or Device Manager. So I booted back into the install CD, it showed up in the disk manager there. Since this was also a blank SSD, I partitioned and formated the drive from the install CD, then exited the installer and booted back to my windows drive.
I have 2 SSD drives working great!
Now to add my 2TB HDD... Same issue, it shows up in BIOS and the install disc, but not in Disk Management or Device Manager. This drive does not have a boot partition on it, however, it does have two existing data partitions. They were made from my previous windows 7 system and the option to delete these partitions is grayed out in the install disc menu. I also have some data that I would like to keep on it. I have a USB dock that I can use to read the contents of the disk just fine. Everything is there and in working order.
What is different about Windows 8.1 that is preventing my hard drives from showing up in windows proper? I am reading things about UEFI online, but nothing seems to fit my exact scenario. I will try and post some screen shots when I get back at it.
I got an old computer, and my sister still is using it, it had XP but since support ended I decided to go for another system, unfortunetly there were no drivers for Vista and up, so I went for a USB boot - Linux Mint Maya 13 installation. The PC ended up being even slower and a friend just recently showed me how to install the drivers for Windows 8. I decided to go with a USB installation but when I restart and boot from the USB to install Windows 8 Pro, it says: Disk Read Error. I tested the USB on my new PC that I use and it did boot, but it won't boot from the old one.
I have a Sony vaio VGX-TP20E. I put the win 8 disk into the computer and setup up the startup to boot from optical drive. But it skips it and starts up win 7 like it normally does. How can I install windows 8?
The first time I did that win7 had some kind of virus in it so I went to the recovery partition and restored the computer to factory settings.
So my other question is if I do somehow get it to work, do I have to delete the recovery partition or do I leave it alone. Logically it would only be able to recover for windows 7 right?
I'm seeking full-disk encryption software. I want to encrypt the volume that my Windows installation is on.
First of all, does Bitlocker come on the home edition of Windows 8.1? I recall on previous versions it was only available in the Pro editions.
However, I would prefer to use an open-source disk encryption solution. I've searched but I have not found any that can encryption the Windows installation volume, the ones I found (such as TrueCrypt) can only set up additional encrypted partitions which is no good for me.
Unable to start Disk Management. I tried the following without success:
- Check file integrity - Repair with DISM - Start the Virtual Disk Service and Volume SHadoy Copy manually and set them to Automatic and Manual (it starts, but Disk Management cannot connect to it) - Disable Firewall and Antivirus - Verified that my system is malware free - Tried opening it in Safe Mode
Is it still possible to bring a disk offline using Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc) in Windows 8 the same way it was possible in Windows 7 or is using Diskpart.exe the only way?
I have hidden all of the foreign language fonts that are Windows 8.1 system fonts. However, the hidden fonts continue to display in Office 2010, Adobe Creative Cloud and Corel Draw X6, as well as other programs and applications.
How do I prevent the fonts from displaying or better -- which ones can be deleted? Surely Windows will function in the U.S. without a Himalayan font loaded.
I've tried using a third party font manager, both NexusFont and Bitstream Font Navigator, but with no improved results.
I have a very peculiar issue; after using various disk imaging tools such as Macrium and Paragon, my boot partitions seem to be strangely corrupted. The effects of this corruption are:
1) Plain-text boot menu instead of the new graphical boot menu, 2) Long delays before the boot menu is shown, 3) Even longer delays when doing native VHD boot, after choosing the boot entry from the menu.
I have done a lot of testing and experimentation, and on a virgin fresh installed system from the Windows 8.1 setup ISO, these symptoms do not appear. Only after I have imaged the system using the imaging tools above, do these symptoms start appearing. Unfortunately, just copying my main Windows C: partition using the same imaging tools re-creates the same issue. So I cannot rely on these partitioning tools.
I need a way - a set of commands - to re-create the boot partitions, re-initialize their BCD stores, etc. so that I can normally boot from my C: partition, as well as native VHD boot.
Needless to say, I want to avoid having to completely reinstall Windows on my C: partition, as that would be extremely time and effort prohibitive, if I only knew how to re-create and/or re-initialize just the boot partitions in question.
I originally built my computer with two 1 TB hdd as RAID1 with Windows 8 Pro 64 Bit as the OS.
The boot files eventually became corrupted. I could not reinstall Windows 8 on the RAID 1 array. So I then purchased two 2 TB HDD and created a new RAID 1 array which Windows 8 readily loaded onto.
I then added the two original 1 TB HDD to the computed to use for photography and media storage. They also showed when booting my computer as a separate RAID 1 array, but were listed as "repair." I went into the RAID BIOS and separated the array. I connected only one of the 1 TB HDD, and the drive was the "E" Drive in my computer, but I was unable to access it. "E: is not accessible. Access is denied." Disk Management showed the drive as DISK 1, but as two partitions: System Reserved 350 MB NTFS Healthy (Active, Primary Partition) and 931.17 GB NTFS Healthy (Primary Partition). I used Diskpart to create a Primary partition and format the disk. That HDD now works fine. Unfortunately I did not backup the data on that HDD, which I would like to have.
I did try the second mirrowed 1 TB HDD on the computer before formatting the first and was able to access all of the data on the HDD.
Now after formatting the first 1 TB HDD, I added the second 1 TB HDD from the original RAID 1 array back onto the computer, wanting to retrieve the data on it. This HDD does not show on My computer and is not assigned a drive letter. However the HDD is listed in Disk Management as DISK 2 and partitioned into System Reserved 350 MB NTFS Healthy ( active, Primary Partition) and 931.17 GB NTFS Healthy (Primary Partition). Looking for retrieving the data on this disk, copying it to another HDD, and then creating one partition on this HDD? How to assign the HDD a drive letter. I would like to format this HDD after copying the data, and have my computer assign it a drive letter so that I can use it.
When I click photos a screen comes up that says the following "All your photo sources are hidden.to show some change your settings" What do I need to correct this so when I click photos the photos are shown?
After installing Windows 8 my computer had four partitions; I thought they'd be fine but want to change it to have two big ones, one for Media and one for typical C: usage. I moved everything out of D: to delete the volume so I would have free space to the right of C:, which I've read is what you need to do in order to extend partitions using Disk Management. However, the option is still greyed-out when right-clicking C: as shown:
I did this because I've read mixed things about using 3rd-party software to extend partitions; some that don't truly extend it and just trick your computer into merging the two... I like doing things the purest way possible and would like to truly combine C: with the free space to the right of it. Why the option is not available?
HP 15-d005TU -3rd Generation Intel Core i3-3110M Processor (2.4 GHz) -500GB Hard Drive Toshiba MQ01ABF050 -4096MB DDR3 SDRAM -DVD Optical drive hp DVDRAM GU90N -Windows 8.1 64bit
On delivery it had 9 Windows updates installed ( 8, dated Nov 13 and the last one dated 07 Mar 2014, perhaps just before it left the factory). My first priority was to update Windows. A total of 78 updates including the last major Windows 8.1 update 1 akin to a Service Pack - KB2919335 and all this took a lot of time. All updates went on well with no problems.
Now I find that Windows Disk Management lists two OEM recovery partitions D: ( What it was earlier, I did not notice but I presume it was showing one correctly since any abnormality would have caught my attention.)
Diskpart lists all the partitions correctly. And so also bootice. Now what is causing this and how do I fix it?
I find there is a Intel Manageability Firmware Recovery Agent - [URL] .... My own guess is some Intel driver/firmware may be causing it. As I said it is only a guess. I tried the update with it but so far Intel servers could not be reached though my internet connection is OK.
I have a laptop with Windows 8 installed in a 256Gb SSD. There's a 32Gb recovery partition whose purpose is to recover the drive to factory install. Since I already imaged this recovery partition to an external drive I would like to delete it and merge it to the main C partition to increase capacity. I know I can do this easily with 3rd party solutions (Easus, etc), but I'd like to do it using the Windows 8 built in Disk Management. I tried but when I right click on the 32Gb recovery partition the only option that shows up is "Help", it does not show any other option that shows for the other partitions (Shrink, etc).
So I've been playing around with FreeNAS on another rig, you install the server on a USB drive and run the server form the flash drive. I've decided to go another rout and not use free nas so I went to format the 2 flash drives I was messing with and there are some partitions I can't remove with disk management, and space missing.
disk 1.jpg
Disk 3 should be 4GB large but I can only find the 943 MB
disk 2.jpg
disk 3.jpg
It doesn't give me any options to change the volumes on Disk 4.
The disk management tool on my windows doesn't move on and hangs at "connecting to virtual disk service" forever:
My HP desktop is new, windows 8.1, hard drive having ample space. I searched the web and tried, but to no avail. Or where can I download a free windows disk management tool to fix the issue?
Disk management won't allow me to extend empty 46GB volume. The windows disk management will not allow me to delete any partitions. Do I need to do an Fdisk ? or use a third party program to do this ?
Before I do this I must create a windows setup disk because I do not have one at the moment , all I have is a Dell usb Restore. would be good if there was a video clip of how to delete the partition.
I've long been an XP user, just purchased a new desktop with 8.1 and a 2TB HDD this week.
I was partitioning some drives to organize things, and i am stuck. On a 2TB drive, i have so far allocated 900GB over 4 drives for files, etc. [100,200,300,300]
I have 946.42GB left on my C, and i was hoping to get at least 2-3 more 200/300GB drives before leaving the remainder to C, but when i attempt to shrink my C drive, Disk Management tells me ive only got 20835MB/20GB available space to shrink. Wtf? I have literally added nothing to the computer except uTorrent, ive used Disk Optimizer to defrag the C drive 3 times, and still all of this space is unavailable? The OS has unmovable files scattered that loosely??
I partitioned my hard disk into a 150GB (C) and 500GB (D) and upgraded from Win7 to Windows 8 (and subsequently Windows 8.1 after the recent updates). The OS is installed onto the C Drive.
Performed a Clean Installation of Windows 8 on my C Drive. Under the Choose What To Keep Option, I selected Nothing.
Technically speaking my C Drive would have been wiped clean but after the Windows 8 installation, my C Drive only has 5GB of space left (145GB is being used). The Windows 8 OS is not detecting any of the old programs in my C Drive and the automated Disk Clean up feature only offers removal of temporary internet files. Which brings me to one possible assumption...
The Clean Installation Failed. Windows 8 simply installed itself again on my C Drive and the remaining disk space (containing my previous Windows 8.1 OS and programs) is locked down somewhere. I suspect this had something to do with changing my HD format 3 years ago when I wiped clean my pre-loaded ASUS laptop Win7 and partitioned it to install my Windows 8.
Is it possible not to have the partition "recovery"?
Because if you look at the two tutorials:
- UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) - Install Windows 7 with - Windows 7 Forums
- UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) - Install Windows 8 with
In the tutorial to install Windows 7 in UEFI, there is not that damn partition recovery, while in the tutorial for Windows 8, we can see it.
When I install Windows 7 (MBR mode), I avoid this partition "recovery" by creating a partition with a name before installation. I install the OS on it and everything is fine, no partition "recovery" But here, since one must delete all partitions, If I create a GPT disk with a partitioning tool before installing, is that it might be appropriate?
I am attempting to install Windows 8 (I currently have Vista) but Autorun doesn't work and when I attempt to access the disk in the CD ROM I am asked if I want to format the empty disk. I recently had to reformat the hard drive back to its factory settings (Vista O/S) for reasons I won't go into. The problem isn't limited to the installation disk.
I have just bought an AIO Asus desktop with 1 Tb of storage. The c: (Windows)drive is allocated 100gb and the d: drive 931gb. I just want to transfer all the data from my old computer. This was pretty much all in the folder c:>Users>Myname, but when I try to transfer it all into the same folder on the new computer, obviously with 100gb there is not enough space.
