Partition mystery

Hi,

I'm using Acronis Disk Director Suite 9.0 and have the following setup :

Disk #1 - SerialATA - 250 Gb
Part 1, Pri, Act, NTFS -> holds WinXP professional - C:
Part 2, Ext with 2 logical partitions, both NTFS - D: and E:

Disk #2 - SerialATA - 160 Gb
Part 1, Pri, NTFS - F:
Part 2, Ext with one logical partition, FAT32 - G:

This all seemed fine. When I installed WinXP Prof. SP2 it clearly showed me the above disks/partitions correctly during setup (nonGUI mode).
But after completing the WinXP installation my primary partition on the second disk has disappeared !!!
When I checked with (bootable) PQMagic v8.0 disks this F: partition shows up as 07h. The 120Gb it represents is marked as completely used !?

What's going on here ?
Do I have to delete the F: partition and re-create if afterwards ? With Acronis Disk Director ? Or better to use the WinXP disk management ?

Any help is appreciated.
Bart

 

Hello Bart,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Partition and Disk Managing Software.

Could you please create Acronis Report in the way described at Acronis Help Post and send it to support@acronis.com along with the description of the problem? This will allow us to examine your partition layout and provide you with the solution.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

Hi Ilya,

Tnx. for your reply.
Meanwhile I already went into DDS 9.0 and formatted the partition 'back' to NTFS. This went without any problems. When I restarted the PC also WinXP recognised this partition as a primary NTFS partition.
But for some reason this was made into an active partition (on the second HDD). Also in the WinXP disk manager it shows up as a primary, active partition. But that isn't necessary isn't it ? Only the system partition (which is the first primary on my 1st HDD) should be active.

Can I make a primary partition 'un-active' ? Didn't find that option in DDS 9.0.
Also, is there any potential risk or harm in having this partition active ?
Furthermore I noticed (when using a MBR check tool) that the NTFS partitions on my first HDD are list as NTFS version 3.1. But this 'problem-partition' on my second HDD is listed as NTFS version 1.2 ? What's that ? Any risk there ?

After reading the above, do you still need the Acronis Report you've requested in your mail ?

TIA,
Bart

 

Look in your BIOS, does it list the bootable drives?

I had the same problem where the Primary could not be made inactive. On my board there were 4 drives listed as bootable -
1. Primary
2. Slave
3. SCSI D0
4. SCSI D1

I Changed the BIOS so that only 1. Primary was bootable. Then I was able to set another partition as active.

 

Jeff,

My BIOS only lists 1 HDD (the first one - this is correct) as bootable. I have the following BIOS setup on my Intel D865PERLL board :

S-ATA 0 : HDD 1 (this is the one with the bootable system partition - WinXP)
S-ATA 1 : HDD 2 (this is the one with the active partition that I don't want to be active ...)
ATA 2 Master : DVD-ROM
ATA 2 Slave : nothing
ATA 3 Master : DVD-Writer
ATA 3 Slave : nothing

Boot menu is set as follows :

1 - FDD
2 - ATA 2 Master : DVD-ROM
3 - S-ATA 0 : Primary harddisk with system partition

I have disabled 'boot from LAN' and 'boot from USB'.

Thanks anyway for your ideas ...
Bart

 

Hello Bart,

We regret to inform you that you can make the partition "un-active" only by choosing another active partition on the same disk. There is no problem having this partition active if you do not boot from that hard disk.

The report I mentioned would show the exact partition layout on all your disks. I asked for it because you reported the problem with partition sizes. If there is no problem any longer we do not need the report.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman