Resized clusters. Can't boot Vista

Kane:

Vista Ultimate can run from 64k clusters (I'm running it from 16k clusters as we speak) but it cannot boot from a partition with greater than 4k cluster size.

Do you have Acronis Disk Director or other partitioning software? (If not you can use Vista DiskPart from the command line on the installation DVD).

Create a partition layout like this on your blank hard disk:

[Vista Boot - 100 MB - NTFS - Primary - Active] [Vista - NTFS - Primary] [Data partition 1 - NTFS - logical] [Data partition 2 - NTFS - logical].... [etc] (as desired).

Give each partition a label (Vistaboot, Vista) so that you can tell them apart later.

Before installing, boot to the Vista DVD and go to a command prompt. Figure out the drive letters of your first two partitions. They will probably be C: and D:, but check to be sure. Format the first two partitions from the command prompt as follows:

Code:

format C: /FS:NTFS /V:Vistaboot /A:4K
format D: /FS:NTFS /V:Vista /A:64K

Substitute the correct drive letters in the above commands if necessary.

After you have formatted the partitions, boot to the DVD and install Vista. When asked about creating partitions, leave them as you have set them up with Disk Director; DO NOT use Vista's partitioner to delete or create partitions.

When asked which partition to install to, point to your Vista partition (the one with 64k cluster size). The installer will put the boot files in the small 100 MB partition (because it is the active partition) and this partition was formatted with 4k cluster size, so it will be capable of booting Vista. The rest of the installation will go to the large primary partition (the one with 64k cluster size).

When the installation is complete you should end up with the Vista partition as C: and the Vistaboot partition as D:

Hope this helps...

 

Ok,

I think i might understand...

C: Vista 64k
D: BOOT 4k

A question before i begin... whats the MINIMUM size for the boot partition? i have seen 50/100/150/ext ext whats the minimum I can make it?
im just going to try it with a 64MB Boot and hope it works... if it does... im going to game 24/7 for the rest of the week to vent my frustration.. (CSS/TF2 work great)
Can you give me the code (so i can exact copy) for diskpart on the vista installation?

EDIT: ok.. heres what I did, i ditched my regular copies of Partition software (i legally own them but they sometimes piss me off) for my Hiren's BootCD Fired up Disk Director Suite v9, Completely removed all partitions from the drive, finalized it, then made a 62mb 4k partition at the END of the drive called BOOT, then I made the rest of the drive 64k and finalized them both, then i set the 62mb 4k partition to Active (oh by the way i noticed you said something about logical but i made them both primary... is that going to be a problem?) ok so it looks good as vista is installing, HOWEVER the question I have now is once its installed (pending it booting ok) how can i hide or mask the BOOT partition so that i cannot see it and it doesn't take a drive letter (besides removing the drive letter with Computer Management- Disk management)

 

fooey... it seemed to install fine... but now it just has that annoying blinkin _ wont do anything else...

WUT am i doin wrong..

EDIT: ok... just did it again... this time with 100MB boot partition... well... this time I actully get an error... a disk read error...but aside from that it wont boot... also when i checked shift-f10 and did diskpart apparently the boot got labled C and Vista D... what the HELL

 

I have a 100 MB boot partition at the end of the drive and the occupied space is 32.1 MB. But your comment reminded me of something. On one of my PCs I was able to install to a 100 MB boot partition. On the other (identical hardware), the installer complained about the partition being too small. To work around that I temporarily expanded the boot partition to 256 MB and then, after installing, shrunk it back to 100 MB. Go figure.

I used to hide the boot partition but don't recommend doing this any more. I've run into a couple of Windows updates that failed because they needed to write to the boot partition, and with it hidden, the installer failed. If you don't prefer it having the drive letter D, then temporarily hide it with Acronis Disk Director or your favorite partition software and then use Vista Disk Management to assign drive letters to your other disks and optical drives per your personal preference. After you are done, unhide the boot partition and it will be assigned the next letter in sequence the next time you boot into Vista.

Don't worry about the drive letters as you are setting this up. When you boot to the Vista DVD, Windows Recovery Environment will assign C: to the first primary active partition on the drive, which will be your boot partition. When you finish installing Vista and boot it, Vista will assign C: to its system partition. The boot partition will get the next letter.

Also, to avoid confusion, remove any other internal hard disks temporarily until you get Vista installed and it has created entries in the registry for its two partitions. After first successful boot you can reconnect your other drives.

 

ok so... I have tried from 64MB to 256MB Vista INSTALLS... i never get an error... but thats just it... it only installs once it finishes the first part of the install and reboots thats it... nothing else... just sits their with a blinkin _ ... BOOT is 4k 128MB in size and at the front of the disk (already tried it at the back) and VISTA is 64k and i think 34GB in size (since thats the rest of the partition left) but like i said... it "installs" fine... but after the first reboot... nada... zip... zilch...

EDIT: yeah Nothing but the CD-ROM and MAIN HDD are connected... nothing else..
EDIT2:... ok... so before i sell my OEM of Vista and XP and go linux... please list the EXACT commands i need to do with VISTA only... no other partition software...

I think i got this so far:
Boot from Vista CD, Hit Shift-F10 during disk selection, (the disk is already completely DELETED... nothing their... no partitions), start DISKPART...
Ok so now what? (how do i setup 2 partitions with DISKPART) then, format C: /FS:NTFS /V:BOOT /A:4K format D: /FS:NTFS /V:WinBLOWS /A:64K
That should be it right? After thats finished select the WinBLOWS partition to install and i should be good to go?

 

I'll take a stab at it but usually I do this with partitioning software. You can check the exact DISKPART command syntax with this article.

Boot the Vista DVD to the command line and enter the following:

Code:

select disk 0

Delete all partitions:

Code:

clean

Create the boot partition. If you are using DISKPART then there will be 1 MB gaps between partitions anyway so there is no need to get carried away trying to shrink the boot partition to its absolute minimum size:

Code:

create partition primary size=1M

Now format the boot partition as NTFS with 4k cluster size:

Code:

format FS=NTFS Label=Boot Quick Unit=4k

Check the results:

Code:

list partition

You should see only one partition listed. Set this partition active:

Code:

Active

Now create the main Vista partition. I think that if you leave out the SIZE parameter the partition will fill the remaining space. Try it:

Code:

create partition primary

Check the size of the newly-created partition:

Code:

list partition

If it isn't correct then try this:

Code:

delete partition
create partition primary size=34G

Check it:

Code:

list partition

If correct, proceed with formatting:

Code:

select partition 2
format FS=NTFS Label=Vista Quick Unit=64k

Check results:

Code:

list partition

If satisfied:

Code:

exit

That's correct.

If you still get the blinking cursor then check your BIOS to make sure that the disk is the first boot device.

 

Hey,

Ill give it a go.. cleaning now.. its takin forever...
Anyway ill edit this post when I have results... (ALSO yeah i am a computer guru of the picky kind... I have my BIOS completely customized... and yes i tried the different defaults and such... also the only drive set to boot is the WD Raptor HDD... the CDROM is only used as boot when i force it with F11 BIOS BOOT menu).
Cheers



EDIT: ok... so... from what im understanding... Vista with SP1 (my retail integ CD) does NOT like anything other then Vista setting up the partitions... go figure... booting now... will EDIT2 then when i have verified that it hasnt resized the cluster and given the main drive D: ill post again

 

I'm not sure what's going on here. I set up one machine entirely with Acronis Disk Director and installed Vista. I later split the boot files into their own partition and then did a nondestructive cluster resize from 4k to 16k on the Vista partition. That worked.

On the second machine I set up the partitions with Disk Director but used the Vista DVD to format the Vista partition to 16k clusters and then installed Vista SP1 directly, as you are now doing, and it worked.

 

ok well i thought everything was ok...


it restarted a few times... now it goes to Windows Boot Manager... with an error...


\Windows\system32\winload.exe

status: 0xc000000f


any hints...

 

Things that work for a while and then fail usually mean that you may have a hardware problem. I would check the disk carefully for errors. Boot from the installation DVD and go to the command prompt. Run chkdsk c: /r and chkdsk d: /r to check for bad sectors on the hard disk. You can also run the memory test routine to see if there are any problems with bad RAM.

 

nope no error's... i did the 5 hour (well thats how long it took) chkdsk scan... 0 problems what-so-ever... and that was before i started any of this tinkering... (also had memtested the ram...)

BUT i will notice that you said it should install with Vista on C: and BOOT on D: well no matter what utility i use BOOT is still C and Vista is still D

I think im just going to rip my remaining hair out (shaved 2 days ago) and drink (cry) myself to sleep...

EDIT: what do you mean by work for a while then fail... when I said i thought it was working earlier i mean that the windows setup kept restarting(like its supposed to)... not that i had gotten into the OS like a normal login...

 

But the drive letters should be correct when you get Vista to actually boot. The System partition will get the C drive letter (as viewed by Vista when it is running) and then the others will be assigned per the Windows drive letter heirarchy (active partition on primary disk gets the next letter, etc). In your case it means Vista=C and Boot=D.

Sorry - I misunderstood what you were saying.

Since I've never personally tried 64k cluster size then I can't be certain that it actually works, but I can't think of a reason why it should not work. I was successful with 16k clusters. You could try formatting the Vista partition at 16k before installing as an experiment if you're so inclined. But it is getting late...

 

yup its 11PM here... like i said im off to bed...
Heres what I have done
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Diskpart
select disk 0
create partition primary size=35174
create partition primary size=128 (i didnt actually have to put size as that was all that was left anyway)
select partition 1
format fs=ntfs label=Alpha quick unit=64k
assign letter=c
select partition 2
format fs=ntfs label=Omega quick unit=4k
assign letter=d
active
list partition (both Partition 1/2 show up)
list volume (shows my CDROM then shows C: as Alpha -34GB- and D: as Omega -128MB- good to go right! )
exit
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
So now im doing the install... while im sleepin... if it fails... im just going to reinstall Server08 unless i find something by tomorrow night... pissoff M$ u make me sick...

EDIT: nope... same frucking winload.exe error (im starting to think its SP1... because before it starts its installation finalization its booting fine... then when it finishes and reboots i get the winload error... have you updated to Vista SP1 on your 16k partition drive?) well now im gonna attempt to install from regular Vista Ultimate W/O SP1... will let u know.. (yeah... im so annoyed i cannot sleep... so +10 to migraine headache)

 

well install without integrated SP1 cd went fine... booted fine... works nicley... now to find out if SP1 just says no all togeather... installing SP1 now... heres hopeing... HEY if it doesnt work i get to go blow up the MSFT forums with a bug report...

 

Yes. I installed Vista RTM on my office PC in February of 2007 and I've kept it updated ever since. I installed the SP1 update when it was released. No problems.

I also installed Vista on my home PC last May from a Vista SP1 DVD in exactly the same manner that you are attempting and it worked perfectly.

I'm not sure what's causing you so much grief.

 

Hi MudCrab and K0lo,

I just have a few questions that I need answers before I proceed with your instruction to resize the cluster size on my Vista Home Premium-32bit SP1.

Does this work on a 32-bit?

I have VSS enabled on my Vista partition. Will this be a problem?

I have Norton Ghost 14 running. Will this be a problem?

I also have Diskeeper running auto defrag... will this be a problem?

I am using a laptop, and I don't have a retail Vista disk, so there's no cmd prompt in my OEM cd. Can I use the Recovery CD from Ghost 14 to use the cmd prompt function inside it?

I don't get the Repair function from my OEM Vista Recovery CD... How do I do it then?

Thanks in advance!

 

Hi, Peterfan, welcome to the forum.

If you're referring to Vista 32-bit, yes.

VSS will work with larger cluster sizes but when you resize the clusters you will lose all of your current restore points and shadow copy files. Afterward, Vista will start creating them again.

That I don't know.

No, other than anytime that you defragment a partition containing VSS files the shadow copy storage space will get larger. That's one of the reasons that Microsoft recommends 16k clusters or larger on a disk with VSS enabled because the larger cluster size will minimize shadow copy storage growth during a defrag (compared to the 4 kB cluster size used in a default installation of Vista).

Not unless the Ghost recovery CD contains the Vista repair environment; I don't know if it does or does not.

You can download an ISO image of the Vista recovery environment from here. Make a CD from the ISO and use it in place of a retail Vista DVD.

 

Thanks for the link to the image

Diskeeper 2008 has this function of "defragmenting with VSS enabled method" that minimized the growth of VSS storage. I just hope that doesn't mess with the cluster size on my drive itself.

Thanks for the quick reply, but I won't try resizing just yet cuz last time I did it wrong and apparently defraging my backup image messed it up, so I had to reinstall everything and savage all I can from the corrupted image.

I am very grateful for your contribution in finding out how to resize the clusters this way. Will let you know if I encounter any problems in the future.

THanks, K0lo!

 

So, after post #52's instruction. I should run chkdsk and defrag in Vista. And then, is it possible to set the boot drive hidden (C using any disk management software? Will the drive letters change after I hide it? Does this mess with the registry somehow? For example, if I were to install something, I would have to change the directory to my Vista partition everytime now? Or, shortcuts that links to something in C: will not work anymore after changing drive letters?

 

peterfan01:

Keep in mind that the drive letters shown in the recovery environment may differ from those shown when you boot into Vista. For example, on my system the boot partition is C: when booted from a recovery CD but it's F: when booted normally into Vista. The Vista partition is F: when booted into the recovery environment but it's C: when booted into Vista.

Yes, you can hide the boot partition using Acronis Disk Director or other partitioning software. In fact, you may want to do this for the first time that you try booting into Vista after setting up a separate boot partition, just so you are sure that Vista will keep the C: drive letter (if that's the drive letter used when you installed Vista). After doing this once, the C: drive letter will be saved in the registry at HKLM\System\MountedDevices, and the C: assignment will be persistent.

After the first boot I would recommend that you un-hide the boot partition. While Vista will boot fine from a hidden partition, there have been a few Windows Updates that have needed to access the boot partition, and if you have it hidden then the updates will fail. The first time that you boot Vista with the boot partition visible it will be assigned the next unused drive letter in sequence. For example if Vista has C: and you have a data partition that is D: and your DVD drive is E: then the boot partition will get F: assigned on its first boot when unhidden.

You should get all this sorted out and working first. Then create a full-disk image with ATI. And then finally you can change the cluster size on your Vista partition.

 

When you said "...you may want to do this for the first time that you try booting into Vista..." Do you mean that after separating the partition, on the following reboot I should have my partitioning software in my CD drive and boot right into it to hide the partition? Or, do you mean that I should boot into Vista normally then hide it? I am guessing the first one, but that's kinda hard isn't it? Having to reject the Vista Recovery CD and swap it with my DD CD during the POST.

Just kidding, I would pause it if that's what you meant I need to do right after separating the partition.

 

AH, and also... I know I must be very annoying to ask this... in case that I failed, is there a way to reverse the process (eg. use the original boot folder to boot again)?

I am sorry but I don't know a thing about Cmd.

 

The problem has to do with how Vista assigns drive letters. If you make changes to only one partition, the others will remain with the assigned letters. If you make changes to several partitions at the same time without booting into Windows between changes, Windows will reassign letters and ignore the previous assignments for those partitions.

When you're trying to do a separation of this kind, you want the "main" Vista partition to remain as the C: drive. If you create a situation that causes Vista to reassign both partitions, C: will be assigned to the booting (Active) partition and not the Vista partition. This is not what you want.

By "breaking into" the Windows boot-up and hiding the boot partition, Windows will see the Vista partition first and let it keep C:. After that, you can unhide the boot partition and proceed normally.

If you have problems switching DVDs on boot-up, just press DEL (or whatever your BIOS key is) and enter the BIOS. Then you can change the DVD and reboot. If you have a boot menu key option, you can use that too.

 

You can reverse the process. One way is to copy the files back. Another way is to just rename the originals (after you've copied them to the boot partition) and leave them on the Vista partition (bootmgr >> bootmgr_old and BOOT >> BOOTOLD, for example). Then you can just rename them back.

The Vista partition would also need to be set as the Active partition again. If you only modifed the BCD entries on the boot partition's BCD file, then the existing one on the Vista partition should still be valid. Otherwise, you'd need to set the entries back to either "boot" or the Vista partition to be able to boot.

 

Thanks for your help. So far so good... Some weird things are happening to the computer after the clusters in C: is resized to 16K.

For example,
The hibernate function got turned off (probably because hibernate.sys got deleted somehow)
VSS got enabled on all my drives!? Diskeeper shows that and I got very confused. After restarting the program it's back on track w/ just VSS enabled on C:.

If anything major comes up I will tell you guys. I don't see any noticible increase in HD read speed though. HD Tune shows pretty much the same results. I only get around 17MBps on my 5400rpm 2.5" Fujitsu. How come you guys are getting, like, 500MBps?