Logical Drive Lable Swap question TI-Please help.

OK I have really screwed up here.

OS: Vista 64 Ultimate
TI: 11 Home

My laptop has two drives in it: DRIVE0 and DRIVE1. I reformatted Drive 0 and partitioned it with two partitions, one for the OS and one for the program files. So I wanted Drive 0 to have C:/, and D:/.

However, as I was partitioning, I failed to redefine the drive letters. So Drive 1 is now the D:\ drive, which splits physical drives between drive labels.

EX:
Drive 0 = C:\ and E:\
Drive 1 = D:\
(those of you who know what I'm talking about don't need any explanation--lol)

Now the problem is that the program files are D:\ on DRIVE1 and not DRIVE0.

Is it possible to make an image of Drive 1, which is D:\programs, and then change the drive letters to their correct labels, so that Drive 0 = C:\ and D:\, then restore the image to the redefined D:\ on Disk 0- and have all the program file paths work?

 

WellWell:

You might be able to fix this using only Vista Disk Management. One requirement is that you cannot change drive letters on drives that have a paging file, so if you do have any paging files on D: or E: then temporarily disable the paging files on those drives.

Start Disk Management Console and right-click on what is now the D: drive and choose "Change Drive Letter and Paths...". Reassign a temporary unused letter, like F, to this drive. Then go to your current E: drive and reassign its drive letter to D. Finally, go back to the F drive (or whatever temporary letter you used) and reassign it to be the E: drive.

If you had disabled any paging files on either of these drives, re-enable them and you should be back in business.

 

Mark, the program files are located on DRIVE1, not DRIVE0, which means the program files need to migrate somehow to the physical DISK0. See, that's the problem. The only way to affect this change is to reload the entire machine, or hopefully, TI can create an image of DRIVE1 and restore it on DRIVE0--after I change the logical drive letters. I've never ran across a program that will migrate program files, that are linked to the OS, to a different drive or partition. One of the problems is that many files and registry entries will be "in use." I'm hoping I can trick the OS into thinking that nothing has changed, since it sees the programs on Drive "D", even though they have migrated to another physical disk.

 

OK; I misunderstood what happened to you. Yes, I think that you can do this with TI. Here is a way that should work:

1. Create an image of your programs on Drive1, or what is currently D:, using TI. You can do this while Windows is running. Store the image file on an external USB hard disk, if available. If not and if you have the room, store the image on the D: drive.

2. Make sure that you have Drive0 partitioned the way you want with enough room for the programs that you will move to the second partition on this drive.

3. Exit Windows and boot from the Acronis recovery CD.

4. Restore the image file from your external drive (or from Drive1, depending on where you put it) to the second partition on Drive0. When restoring choose only the data partition (not the entire disk) as the source. Choose the second partition on Drive0 as the destination, and if it is to be a logical partition choose "logical" as the type.

5. When the process is complete you will need to force Windows to assign drive letters correctly. So before you reboot into Vista, shut down your PC and disconnect Drive1.

6. Reboot into Vista and you should end up with C: assigned to the first (Vista) partition and D: assigned to the second (data) partition. Shut down again.

7. Reconnect Drive1 and reboot into Vista. You should end up with Drive1 being assigned a different letter, and you can now change it using Disk Management console.

I think this should produce your desired outcome.

 

Mark, that's something like I had in mind also.

What I was going to do was this:

1. Make an image of my drives as they are in case of failure. the images will be of the D and C drives, which are located on separate drives, as we have discussed, and this is the problem. (BTW, the drives are identical.)

2. Leave the program files on Drive1 like they are now.

3. Switch Drive1 from D to F, which will free up E.

4. Change Drive0 from C, E to C,D.

4. Change Drive1 back from F to E, like it should have been from the start.

4. Boot with the TI boot disk and restore the partition with the programs on what was beforehand labeled as drive D.

5. Reboot and Windows should have the partitions named like I want them, with the programs on the D partition and Drive0.

The only problem I see is that the program files will no longer work after I change the drive letters, which isn't a problem because I'll be rebooting with the TI boot disk.

Do you see any problems with this method?

 

That should work. If you change the drive letters using Vista Disk Managment then they will be entered into the "mounted devices" key in the registry and will survive a reboot.

Actually, I think that you can omit the last two steps for yet another method. After you get the drive letters the way that you want them just copy and paste everything from your new E: drive to your new D: drive. Make sure that your copy operation gets all of the hidden files and folders and protected operating system files. The program pointers in the registry will then be correct.

Both ways should do the trick.

 

The only problem with that method is that I've never known Windows to "copy" anything completely, since some files are always in use.

In any event, after I change the drive letters, and then reboot, I don't need to go all the way back to Windows in order for the changes to take effect, do I? I was planning on going straight from the reboot into the TI boot disk. That may pose a problem, but I can always use the boot disk with Acronis Disk Director on it to change the drive labels at the boot level. Then reboot, go into the TI boot area of the boot disk, and restore to the now correct drive D.

I will try to simply copy everything in windows first. What I'll do is copy all of the files to the correct Drive0, then change the labels, then reboot leaving the old program files on Drive1, just in case.

 

Re: Logical Drive Label Swap question TI-Please help.

Usually not. Changes to drive letters that are done from Vista's Disk Management Console, if they are not done to a system drive or to a drive containing a paging file, will usually complete without requiring a reboot.

You can change the partition labels but not the drive letters in the DD boot environment. Drive letters are meaningless in the boot environment. Ignore them. Vista will do all assignments of drive letters when it reboots by starting with known partitions that are listed in the HKLM\System\Mounted Devices registry key and reassigning these the same drive letter. If any new partitions are encountered that are not listed in this registry key then they get assigned a new letter in accordance with Vista's predefined heirarchy for assigning drive letters.

The surest way to get the outcome that you want is to only make changes to one partition at a time (which is what you are planning on doing anyway, so you should be OK). If you make changes to multiple partitions and then boot into Vista, drive letters will be assigned to those partitions according to Vista's heirarchy, which may differ from what you want (as you found out already).

 

Right about the labels and drive letters in Vista compared to boot level assignments. And that's a really important aspect to keep in mind too, since the unaware could really confuse the drives with drive letters in Vista.

Well, here goes nothing, as the saying goes.

 

Mark,

I did what we were discussing, but just for kicks, I copied the PROGRAMS folder to the E drive and then changed the drive labels in Vista. I had to reboot to set them, but after a few reboots and select copies, everything works fine. So you were right about being able to copy the program files. It actually worked. Vista would not reassign the drives without a reboot, since it kept everything the same so as to affect program stability and usage. In fact, my first move was to assign the D drive, which was DISK1 to F. Then I had to reboot to free the D drive for reassignment. Vista remembered the program locations. So I guess in Vista, if you reassign a program folder, or maybe a system folder, it automatically reassigns the paths. I know this because when I booted back in, I had no D drive but the programs worked. I just reassigned the correct drive as D and then F back to E where it should be.

So everything works fine, except I have one single concern at this point.

When I do a copy or move, explorer reports the file copying, but reports it like this:
Copying from (D(D:\) to (E(E:\) and this has me worried. Any ideas? Could this be a registry setting that I can change?

 

Re: Logical Drive Label Swap question TI-Please help.

That's one I've never seen before.

Feel free to ignore this, but here's what I would try (if you are brave). Delete the contents of the registry key HKLM\System\Mounted Devices. This removes all assigned drive letters and will force a reassignment upon reboot. Shut down. Disconnect drive1 leaving only drive0 with its two partitions. Reboot. Vista will reassign drive letters as follows -- the active primary partition will become C: and the logical partition will become D:. Note that it is very important that Vista does not see your second disk during this first boot! If your optical drive gets assigned to E: then just change it in Disk Management, leaving E: free. Shut down again, reconnect drive1, reboot. Drive1 should then get assigned E:. Maybe this will fix the strange nomenclature on the explorer file copy dialogs.

 

It's actually (D)(D:\) to (E)(E:\)

Is there a registry entry that might be the culprit besides the one you point out?

 

Re: Logical Drive Label Swap question TI-Please help.

I don't know.

 

Re: Logical Drive Label Swap question TI-Please help.

It's that was in my other Vista machine also, so I guess it's normal. Thanks for the help though.

 

Good to know. You got me curious so I just connected to my Vista machine at the office and tried a copy operation to see what the dialog box reported because I've never seen what you reported seeing. I saw the following on the copy dialog box:

On my machine I gave each drive a label, so C: is Programs and D: is Data. So in your case you must not have given your drives any identifying labels so Vista uses (C) and (D) to refer to the drives instead of using labels.

I'm glad it worked out well for you. Have fun!

 

I tried it using labels and w/o. Same thing. Try a copy from the root to the root, such as C: to D:

I still get the shadow letter (C(C:\) to . . . so you can see the ending path.