Drive letter assignment discussion

[foghorne]

this discussion stemmed from a post in the wishlist thread (http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=892828&postcount=557) and has been moved here - Detox

-{ Quote: "- Free drive-letter assignment when restoring (via recovery-cd)
Case:
HD1= c: (boot), d: (apps), f: (system!)
HD2= g: (backup)
Those are the drive letters used by windows.
When i boot with the TI recovery-cd, drive letters look like
HD1= c: (boot), d: (apps), e: (system!)
HD2= f: (backup)

If i clone HD1 to HD2, the system installed on f: won't boot, because ti assigns the wrong drive letters. Same when i try to recover an image i created on windows - TI knows the drive letters windows used, but when recovering it will assign new letters to the partitions." }-

I thought the drive letters were assigned by the OS - not TI ?

F.

[zz9plural]

-{ Quote: "I thought the drive letters were assigned by the OS - not TI ?

F." }-

No, they are assigned by both of them, and often they don't agree about the order.
I would like either to be able to select the drive letters TI uses (for all drives, including optical!), or to be able to select letters for partitions during restore, which are currently assigned by TI, but are different in the OS.

If I disconnect HD2 in my example above and try to restore an Image-File I created of HD1, the optical drive will be assingned F, thus TI won't allow me to select F for the partition "system". TI will assign letter G for that partition and Windows will be upset. ;-/

[foghorne]

-{ Quote: "No, they are assigned by both of them," }-

How do you conclude that?

F.

[norrisg]

-{ Quote: "How do you conclude that?

F." }-

Quite possibly because TI stand-alone uses Linux which doesn't use drive letters, therefore TI has to guess what they should be.

Graham.

[foghorne]

-{ Quote: "Quite possibly because TI stand-alone uses Linux which doesn't use drive letters, therefore TI has to guess what they should be.

Graham." }-

Again, I was under the impression that drive letter assignment was carried out by the OS. If each application could arbitrarily decide which letter belonged to which drive we wouldn't get very far. True Image is just an application.

I think the problem is that Windows uses a different strategy for assigning letters than Linux (or at least than the scripted Linux startup environment) does.

Are you suggesting that the Linux True Image application itself is responsible for mounting devices into the directory tree ?

F.

[zz9plural]

-{ Quote: "Again, I was under the impression that drive letter assignment was carried out by the OS." }-

It is. But the TI recovery cd does not use Windows. Maybe BartPE would do the trick, but for some reason my TI-9-Plugin does not work with the BartPE I created last time.

-{ Quote: "
If each application could arbitrarily decide which letter belonged to which drive we wouldn't get very far. True Image is just an application.
" }-

Yes, but if run via recovery cd the os is different.

-{ Quote: "
I think the problem is that Windows uses a different strategy for assigning letters than Linux (or at least than the scripted Linux startup environment) does.

Are you suggesting that the Linux True Image application itself is responsible for mounting devices into the directory tree ?

F." }-

Are you counting peas?
Very helpful, indeed.
The drive letters assigned by the recovery-cd are (ok, can be) different from the ones assigned by any other OS (if applicable).
I assume that TI is able to "speak" to the LVM of the installed OS - if I restore an individual partition in the scenario above, I can select a drive letter for that partition and Windows will use this drive letter. Unfortunately TI blocks the drive letter I _have_ to use for my system-partition.
Everything would be fine, if I could make TI tell the LVM to assign a drive letter to the selected partition, which is _currently_ used by another device.

[foghorne]

-{ Quote: "
Are you counting peas?
Very helpful, indeed.
" }-

Apologies for trying to understand your problem. I'll know not to bother in future.

F.

[zz9plural]

-{ Quote: "Apologies for trying to understand your problem. I'll know not to bother in future.

F." }-

There is absolutely _no_ relevance in _who_exactly_ assigns the drive letters. So why bother with that detail?
BartPE mounts the optical drive as X - it would be very helpful, if TI could do that too.

[foghorne]

-{ Quote: "There is absolutely _no_ relevance in _who_exactly_ assigns the drive letters. So why bother with that detail?
BartPE mounts the optical drive as X - it would be very helpful, if TI could do that too." }-

I hope you get what you want ;)

F.

[Xpilot]

Ok, let us cut to the chase.
The facts are that the Windows drive letter assignments may be seen differently when booted by the Acronis recovery CD.
So to save any possible confusion the user should give a meaningful NAME to all the partitions in the system. This is easily done in Windows.
From there on in drive letters are no longer significant as far as the user is concerned.

Problem solved.

Xpilot

[bVolk]

Following Howard Kaikow's advice I also added the familiar drive letter, assigned by Windows, in front of the meaningful name, so one of my drives appears as

E_Backup Disk (E: ) in Windows, and

E_Backup Disk (Whatever: ) in the rescue environment.

Foolproof and quick.

[GroverH]

Lets not forget there is no standard drive assignment in XP. The user is allowed to re-assign all but the system drive. Some people want their drive letters to be seguential (like me) so my drive letters are different than those originally assigned by the OS. Likewise, my optical drives have been re-lettered and now at the end of the letter sequence.

I know nothing of Linux but if it relies on rules, it cannot predict what the user will modify.

By the way, Acronis is not the only backup program whose drive letters does not match Windows. See unique link below

-{ Quote: "If i clone HD1 to HD2, the system installed on f: won't boot, because ti assigns the wrong drive letters. Same when i try to recover an image i created on windows - TI knows the drive letters windows used, but when recovering it will assign new letters to the partitions." }-Most likely, the problem of wrong letter assignment was due to failure to keeping the OS from seeing the old drive. The old drive should have been removed before the first boot after cloning. Later, the drive can be attached--if preferred.

[zz9plural]

-{ Quote: "
Most likely, the problem of wrong letter assignment was due to failure to keeping the OS from seeing the old drive. The old drive should have been removed before the first boot after cloning. Later, the drive can be attached--if preferred." }-

The old drive was not attached to the system when I first booted after cloning. Maybe I should clarify my example, as it does not show exactly what I did.

HD1 of this server looks like this:
c: boot
d: programs
f: system

I made an online-image via TI Server 9, which preserved the drive letters correctly.
Then I shut down the server, booted via TI recovery-cd and cloned HD1 to a newly attached clean HD, which also preserved the drive letters correctly.
Everything could have been fine, if there had not been some, eh, circumstances, which rendered the copies of windows on both discs useless (driver issues).
No problem, I thougt, I still have my online-image...which turned out to be useless when using the recovery-cd, because of TIs (Linuxs) different way of drive lettering.
The only way to restore that image, was to put the image on a network share and use the BartPE-Plugin - BartPE uses X for the optical drive.

[mdoty]

I have an internal hard drive with only 1 partition lettered C.
When I use TI 10 to clone it to an external Lacie Sata drive
the letter D is assigned on the first reboot unless the power
cable to the first hard drive is unplugged on the first reboot.
It appears that synchronizing to the operating system on
the first reboot to the new drive seems to ignore the fact
that it is the first boot drive in the chain. I'm guessing the
extra software for RAID/booting that comes with an external
sata drive may not being taken into account so the synchronizing
with operating system is the problem. Again, the solution is
to pull the power cable off the first drive so the second drive
is the first drive on the first reboot. Not sure if early versions
of True Image had this problem. I can XXCLONE the drive
correctly which doesn't do the synchronizing. Another
alternative might be to use Disk Director and use copy partition.
About to try that. Waiting for an early morning response to
my email from Acrnonis. In that email I was told I was doing
something wrong. I am not.

[foghorne]

-{ Quote: "I have an internal hard drive with only 1 partition lettered C.
When I use TI 10 to clone it to an external Lacie Sata drive
the letter D is assigned on the first reboot unless the power
cable to the first hard drive is unplugged on the first reboot.
It appears that synchronizing to the operating system on
the first reboot to the new drive seems to ignore the fact
that it is the first boot drive in the chain. I'm guessing the
extra software for RAID/booting that comes with an external
sata drive may not being taken into account so the synchronizing
with operating system is the problem. Again, the solution is
to pull the power cable off the first drive so the second drive
is the first drive on the first reboot. Not sure if early versions
of True Image had this problem. " }-

The issue to do with preventing the newly cloned drive seeing the old on the first reboot, and the issue to do with preventing the source drive seeing the new partition before cloning are simply to do with the fact that the NT family cache drive letters assigned to partitions. This is nothing to do with True Image.

See http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/partsigs.htm

F.