Re: Drive letter issues in restore

JS

Now, this is getting confusing to me. I have removed all data from the
Z: disk and moved it to an external USB drive I have. I did not format
the Z: drive just moved all the data off. The SVI and recycle info is
still on the Z: drive. I have physically unhooked the drive from the
system. The computer boots fine with the single drive labeled C: & D:.

I have gone to the Disk Management tab and looked at the drive. It
shows a single disk drive (Disk 0) partitioned as a primary partition
C: and an extended partition - logical drive D:. The C: partition
still shows Healthy (System) with no wording that it is active. I
guess it has to be, since it's the only primary partition available.
Also, it won't let me right click and mark it as "Active".

Right now everything seems to be looking good and my System Restore
shows monitoring of C & D.

So I guess my question is - What do I need to do to the hard disk that
contains the Z;: drive so that it can put it back in the system as a
backup storage disk and it won't be marked as 'Active" and will show
up properly in the System Restore section.

Your help is appreciated.

Gary




On Sun, 30 Dec 2007 17:20:27 -0500, Whoopdedoo wrote:

OK - I went to the computer management / disk management tab to look
at the graphical view of the two drives. When I right click on either
the primary partition disk 0 (which is C:) or the primary partition
(which is the only partition) on disk 1 (which is Z:) the option to
"Mark the partition as active" on both drives is grayed out and not
available.

Man this is getting a little crazy.

Thanks,

Gary

On Sun, 30 Dec 2007 15:19:54 -0500, "JS" <@> wrote:

The C: drive should be the 'Active' partition, this is most likely the cause
of your problem.
Please read the following:
To mark a partition as active
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/dm_active_partition.mspx?mfr=true
Changing Active Partition Can Make Your System Unbootable
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/228004
The computer does not start after you change the active partition
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315261/en-us

JS

<Whoopdedoo> wrote in message
news:95rfn31jigti5tt01uf2lfa3tfs5ggq0i1@xxxxxxxxxx
JS

Disk Manager shows Drive Z as follows:
Spare_Backup (Z:)
372.61 GB NTFS
Healthy (Active)
No mention of "System" anywhere in drive Z: info.

Drive C: shows:
Win_XP-SATA (C:)
Healthy (System)

Your second point about System Restore only being of value for the
partition that windows is installed on is noted. However, since
windows is on C:, I would think that C: should show up in the System
Restore settings dialog box, instead of Z: & D: only.

Thanks,

Gary

On Sun, 30 Dec 2007 13:07:56 -0500, "JS" <@> wrote:

Open Disk Manager and see what is shows about the Z drive, it 'Should Not'
be an 'Active/System' partition.
Second point: System Restore is only of value for the partition that
Windows
is installed on, it has no value for other drives/partitions.

From the KB article titled:
Frequently Asked Questions Regarding System Restore in Windows XP
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/newsgroups/faqsrwxp.mspx

JS

<whoopdedoo@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:tqgfn31mcorhne4hen0a5tbc5c10nsi6nu@xxxxxxxxxx
Gents,

First off I'm running Win XP Pro with SP2. I recently added a hard
drive and now my restore system doesn't recognize all the drives.

I was originally running a single SATA drive which was partitioned as
follows:
C: the primary and system partition
D: an extended partition - logical drive used for storage.

At this point the system restore was working fine and monitoring both
the C & D drives. I recently added a second SATA drive. I cloned my
original drive with the C: & D: partitions over to the new drive
(which is slightly smaller that the original drive). The drive boots
fine with no problem and the restore system is monitoring both the C:
& D; partitions. And it recognizes the C: as the system drive.

The problem starts when I add the old original SATA drive to the
system. I formatted the disk and renamed it with the drive letter Z:.
I now use this drive for a backup drive.

No when I look at restore, the system is monitoring the Z: drive which
it calls the system drive and D:. I have no idea what happened to C:.
If I disconnect the spare drive Z:, the system restore seems to return
to normal - C:& D:.

The system check points and restore points that I have created show
up, OK. However, the amount (%) of space I have allocated for keeping
restore information, does seem to indicate that the restore system is
looking at the Z: drive.

I looked back about a year or so through the posts and found some
information concerning one of the M/S' MVP sites that had to do with
missing drive letters in the restore function. There are two options
mentioned. The first has to do with accessing the System Volume
Information (SVI) folder. I followed the instructions and went to the
SVI on drive C: and renamed the "drivetable.txt" file to
old_drivetable.txt. (By the way it was correctly showing the C:,D: &
Z: drives in the text file). I backed out, reset the permissions and
rebooted the system. A new drivetable.txt file was created. It also
showed the correct drives C:,D; & Z:. However, when I go to restore,
only the Z: & D: drives are shown - same as before. While I was
looking, I also checked the SVI folder on the D: & Z: drive just to
make sure that there wasn't a duplicate copy of the drivetable.txt
file there - there wasn't.

OK the second step shown at the site was to "Reinstall system restore
in Win XP". This option removes all existing restore points and resets
the system restore monitoring options to the default (all drives). I
really don't have a huge problem removing my restore pints in order to
fix my problem, since most of the points are just system checkpoints
anyway. I have my entire system backed up with Acronis on my backup
drive, so I can restore from their if I absolutely need to.

I really don't want to remove all the existing restore points to fix
the drive monitoring option unless I have to. But if that option is
all I have available, I'll do it.

Comments and suggestions welcome.

Thank,

Gary



.

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