How to reset "Active" partition?

Discussion in 'Acronis Disk Director Suite' started by Wlodek, Nov 11, 2006.

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  1. Wlodek

    Wlodek Registered Member

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    I have a few hard drives set with "Pri, Act" type. I want only one hard drive to be Active. How to reset the "Active" using Acronis Disk Director?
     
  2. K0LO

    K0LO Registered Member

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    I'm surprised that Acronis did not make it easier to do this. You would think that choosing which partition is set as active is a fundamental operation that a lot of people would need to do. I can't find any way to do this in the program other than resorting to the disk editor.

    Here's how you can do this. Open DD and choose the "Manual" mode. In the display, any disk that has a partition set as active will show up with a red flag on the icon of the partition. Find the one that you are interested in changing and then click on the disk label or icon. You must select the whole disk and not a partition in order to access the partition table in track 0.

    Right-click on the disk and choose "Advanced" and then "Edit". In the editor, choose "View as Partition Table" from the "View" menu. You will then see something like the attached picture.

    The active partition will be identified with a green checkmark. Clear the checkmark and then choose "Edit", "Save Sector". Repeat for the other disks. Don't forget to leave at least one disk with an active partition!
     

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  3. thekochs

    thekochs Registered Member

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    I have 7 HDDs...........each have one partition the size of the HDD. All are Basic. My O/S HDD c: is XP Pro SP2. The other 6 are just MPEG files and backup. Anyway, I mistakingly set the other 6 to Active. The system works but would like to reset them to not be. All I can think of is to delete the parititions and re-format. However, I read your post above and donwloaded DD 10.0 trial version. I followed your instructions and the HDDs had the red flag but when I opened there was no green check flag...even on C:. What did I do wrong ? Is there a simplier way to do this like in FDISK ?

    Also, why would Admin Tools>Diks Mgt. allow me to set these Basic HDDs as Active if there is no O/S on them ?

    Thanks.
     
  4. K0LO

    K0LO Registered Member

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    The trial version of DD10 has limited features and maybe this is one of the features that isn't working.

    However, it won't hurt anything to leave the other disks set with Active partitions. At the worst, if you try to boot one of them you'll just get the "Missing Operating System" error message. Otherwise it won't hurt anything.
     
  5. thekochs

    thekochs Registered Member

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    No other way to change them back ?

    Also, any idea why MS Disk Mgt. allowed me to select Active since these HDDs did not contatin O/S ? In fact at that point they were empty right after format.
     
  6. K0LO

    K0LO Registered Member

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    Sure. Purchase DD10, or download one of the free disk editor tools that will let you edit partition tables, try GParted LiveCD, etc.
     
  7. thekochs

    thekochs Registered Member

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    I looked at GParted and it doesn't look like it can accomplsih this. I would buy DD10.0 if I new this would work but paying $49 when I'm not sure is a big risk. Clearly it would save me a huge amount of time and I'm sure I could use DD in future. How do I confirm this is a limitation of DD Free Trial ?

    Thanks very much for the help !
     
  8. dsync

    dsync Registered Member

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    i to would like to kno how to do this. i need to deactivate to install an OS.
     
  9. K0LO

    K0LO Registered Member

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    dsync:

    If you really want to make a partition not be active (reset the boot flag) you can do it with Acronis DD10 per my previous post #2 above. Or if you can run Linux (try a Knoppix Live CD or try the GParted Live CD) then you can do this easily from the Linux environment.

    Please clarify why you need to reset the boot flag on a partition before installing an operating system to it. Which OS requires this? Perhaps there are other ways to do what you want.
     
  10. thekochs

    thekochs Registered Member

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    I created a GParted LiveCD and used it to boot from. I unchecked the boot flags on the HDDs and this changed them from showing Active in Windows XP. I downloaded DD10 and the trial version would not allow this.....at least it didn't show based on the above post. I assume the purchased version might but I got not response from DD when I asked so I went with GParted. I did look at DD10 and it is a nice package which I may buy in the future anyway.

    It sounds like since these HDDs only have backup/data on them and there is just one partition (Basic) the same size as the disk then having Active on or not really doesn't matter. However, I was concerned since it is not accurate to have these set as Active since they do not contain any O/S files. I just wanted to clean up my mistake....which seems other after searching wanted to do the same.

    Thanks for all the feedback.....GParted worked.

    Regards.
     
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