Drive letter issues in restore

  • Thread starter Thread starter whoopdedoo
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whoopdedoo

Gents,

First off I'm running Win XP Pro with SP2. I recently added a hard
drive and now my restore system doesn't recognize all the drives.

I was originally running a single SATA drive which was partitioned as
follows:
C: the primary and system partition
D: an extended partition - logical drive used for storage.

At this point the system restore was working fine and monitoring both
the C & D drives. I recently added a second SATA drive. I cloned my
original drive with the C: & D: partitions over to the new drive
(which is slightly smaller that the original drive). The drive boots
fine with no problem and the restore system is monitoring both the C:
& D; partitions. And it recognizes the C: as the system drive.

The problem starts when I add the old original SATA drive to the
system. I formatted the disk and renamed it with the drive letter Z:.
I now use this drive for a backup drive.

No when I look at restore, the system is monitoring the Z: drive which
it calls the system drive and D:. I have no idea what happened to C:.
If I disconnect the spare drive Z:, the system restore seems to return
to normal - C:& D:.

The system check points and restore points that I have created show
up, OK. However, the amount (%) of space I have allocated for keeping
restore information, does seem to indicate that the restore system is
looking at the Z: drive.

I looked back about a year or so through the posts and found some
information concerning one of the M/S' MVP sites that had to do with
missing drive letters in the restore function. There are two options
mentioned. The first has to do with accessing the System Volume
Information (SVI) folder. I followed the instructions and went to the
SVI on drive C: and renamed the "drivetable.txt" file to
old_drivetable.txt. (By the way it was correctly showing the C:,D: &
Z: drives in the text file). I backed out, reset the permissions and
rebooted the system. A new drivetable.txt file was created. It also
showed the correct drives C:,D; & Z:. However, when I go to restore,
only the Z: & D: drives are shown - same as before. While I was
looking, I also checked the SVI folder on the D: & Z: drive just to
make sure that there wasn't a duplicate copy of the drivetable.txt
file there - there wasn't.

OK the second step shown at the site was to "Reinstall system restore
in Win XP". This option removes all existing restore points and resets
the system restore monitoring options to the default (all drives). I
really don't have a huge problem removing my restore pints in order to
fix my problem, since most of the points are just system checkpoints
anyway. I have my entire system backed up with Acronis on my backup
drive, so I can restore from their if I absolutely need to.

I really don't want to remove all the existing restore points to fix
the drive monitoring option unless I have to. But if that option is
all I have available, I'll do it.

Comments and suggestions welcome.

Thank,

Gary
 
JS

Disk Manager shows Drive Z as follows:
Spare_Backup (Z:)
372.61 GB NTFS
Healthy (Active)
No mention of "System" anywhere in drive Z: info.

Drive C: shows:
Win_XP-SATA (C:)
Healthy (System)

Your second point about System Restore only being of value for the
partition that windows is installed on is noted. However, since
windows is on C:, I would think that C: should show up in the System
Restore settings dialog box, instead of Z: & D: only.

Thanks,

Gary
 
OK - I went to the computer management / disk management tab to look
at the graphical view of the two drives. When I right click on either
the primary partition disk 0 (which is C:) or the primary partition
(which is the only partition) on disk 1 (which is Z:) the option to
"Mark the partition as active" on both drives is grayed out and not
available.

Man this is getting a little crazy.

Thanks,

Gary
 
JS

Now, this is getting confusing to me. I have removed all data from the
Z: disk and moved it to an external USB drive I have. I did not format
the Z: drive just moved all the data off. The SVI and recycle info is
still on the Z: drive. I have physically unhooked the drive from the
system. The computer boots fine with the single drive labeled C: & D:.

I have gone to the Disk Management tab and looked at the drive. It
shows a single disk drive (Disk 0) partitioned as a primary partition
C: and an extended partition - logical drive D:. The C: partition
still shows Healthy (System) with no wording that it is active. I
guess it has to be, since it's the only primary partition available.
Also, it won't let me right click and mark it as "Active".

Right now everything seems to be looking good and my System Restore
shows monitoring of C & D.

So I guess my question is - What do I need to do to the hard disk that
contains the Z;: drive so that it can put it back in the system as a
backup storage disk and it won't be marked as 'Active" and will show
up properly in the System Restore section.

Your help is appreciated.

Gary
 
You could try Super Fdisk (I have not had the need to try this tool) to make
a bootable CD.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/Super_Fdisk_d4985.html

Next remove your drive that has Windows installed on it.
Now only connect the drive that was Z: to your PC.
Use the CD to boot to Super Fdisk and see what/if there is are options to:
1) Remove or undo 'Active' partition. If so you can skip the other steps.
2) Delete the existing partition,
3) Create a new partition and format without making the partition and Active
or System partition.

Finally shutdown the PC and connect both drives.

JS
 
JS

This is absolutely insane. I down loaded the Super Fdisk program
(Partition Manager 1.62 Demo), installed it and then used the tool to
make a bootable CD. The process went normally and the program said
"Bootable CD done". Only one problem - there are no files on the CD
and my computer will not boot to It. I tried it normally (my CD is the
second boot option) and with my CD as the primary boot drive. Nothing.
Not sure why there is nothing on the CD except for the CD Label it
asks for.

OK - let me ask you a question. Since I can boot my computer with both
hard drives installed and since I can see the Z: drive in the
Partition Manger Program - do I really need to find a way to Boot from
a CD in order to access the program? I looked at the drive in the
program and there is no "remove or undo" active partition option. Only
an option to set it as active, which is grayed out since it is already
shows as active.

Let me mention something here I forgot about. I have Partition Magic
8.0 on my computer and it shows the same thing with both drives as the
other program. The only difference between the two is that the Super
Fdisk program shows my disk #1 status as "System" for C: and "None"
for D: and "Active" for disk#2 Z:. PM 8.0 shows the same thing except
that it shows the status as "Active" for disk#1 - C: .

Bottom line --- is there any reason we can just delete the single
partition on dick#2 - Z:, make a new partition and then format disk#2
from within either Super Fdisk or Partition magic ????

Gary
 
I hate to even mention this - But I just looked at System Restore and
it shows it monitoring all three drives - C:, D: & Z:.
CRAZY
 
Yes you can use Partition Magic/ Disk Manager to delete the partition. It's
might also allow you somewhere in the process provide and option to undo the
'Active' partition either before you delete the partition on during the
recreation of the partition. See the note below!

NOTE: If you do delete the partition with Disk Manager and then only create
an 'Extended Partition' on Z then any logical drive you create and format on
Z cannot be made active (an Active partition can only exist on a 'Primary'
partition).

JS
 
OK - everything went well and now the spare backup drive is redone as
logical drive G:. All dives are being monitored correctly. I'm still
not sure what caused the original problem of the missing drive letter
and the incorrect drive being monitored. Since it seemed to fix itself
yesterday before I redid the partition on the second disk. Just weird
I guess.

Thanks again for your assistance.

Gary
 
You're Welcome.

JS

OK - everything went well and now the spare backup drive is redone as
logical drive G:. All dives are being monitored correctly. I'm still
not sure what caused the original problem of the missing drive letter
and the incorrect drive being monitored. Since it seemed to fix itself
yesterday before I redid the partition on the second disk. Just weird
I guess.

Thanks again for your assistance.

Gary
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