windows repair and windows disk manager show different drive letters

Using windows 7 repair the disk letters are not the same as when in windows os. when in windows all drives (disks, dvd-roms, and usb backup drive) are lettered as they should be. the system reserved partition is not lettered and only shows up in disk management. no problems with booting up and using windows or any apps.
When going into repair ether by the f8 on boot or using the windows install disk or by using the repair disk and selecting command prompt >diskpart.>list volume the screen shows that the system reserved partition is assigned letter C and the windows system is assigned letter E. there is no usb drive listed. When trying to restore system image from the repair menu the windows system image is listed as drive E. and no backup image can be found.
From what I have read the system reserved partition should not have a letter assigned but when I remove the volume letter it returns. also you cannot change the volume letter of any drive containing the windows system.

How to fix repair so in the event of a hard drive failure I will be able to restore the image to the new drive.

BTW the usb drive is recognized in the BIOS.

Drive letters are a Windows software feature - nothing to do with hardware.

Boot into a Linux CD and it will identify partitions by the labels which are written to the HDD.

Windows shows those same labels, but it also invents drive letters.

I believe when you power up into Live Windows it remembers what the letters were previously by a registry entry.

A Windows Boot CD does not use the same registry so it invents a new set of letters for the duration.

windows drive letters are saved in registry HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices and windows installation specific and can be changed.

repair using recovery environment uses it's own letters. So this is normal! What is your D drive in recovery environment?

plug in a usb stick or external drive and boot into recovery environment and enter "command prompt"
DIR D:
DIR E:
DIR F:
DIR G:
do you find usb drive? Are you sure it's formatted?

"the windows system image is listed as drive E"
so you see the system image (aka backup you made)? so you see usb drive

kado897 said:

The only bootable program that I have seen keep the same letters is Macrium Reflect.

That is by luck, not by design

Windows have its own rules about default allocation of drive letters,
and I guess you only have defaults that WinPE and Windows Live sort of agree upon.

Mine are not default.
Primary HDD has :-
C_System_C (C:\)
D_Data_D (D:\)
H_Portable_H (H:\)
Primary HDD has :-
E_GPT_E (E:\)
T_GPT_T (T:\)

I was forced to use H:\ because that holds all the Portable 32 bit Tools I used on 32 bit XP which had many partitions and H:\ held these portable things.
I assume the true 32 bit portable applications do not mind what Drive Letter they sit in,
but H:\ also held several hundred BAT scripts created years earlier, and still used,
and I feared that they might invoke an application and define its path starting with H:\,
so I ensured that 65 bit Windows 7 would also call it H:\
but the Macrium Boot CD does not know that.

I really needed the H_???????_H to know that which partition is being referred to when using the Linux Based Minitool Partition Wizard Boot CD,
and H_???????_H is still very useful to ensure that I know which partition the Macrium Boot CD is referring to.

Regards
Alan

in the recovery environment the windows system image to be restored is shown to be on drive E. The system image that was backed up on the usb drive cannot be found. There is no usb drive listed within the restore environment. It is formated NTSF. I have tried pluging in differant usb ports, no help. The usb drive is recognized within windows and in the bios. also windows backup and restore works normaly copying both system image and files to and from the usb drive.
guess the first thing is to get the usb drive to be seen in the repair enviornment. The usb drive came formatted from western digital. Its a my book essential 2gig. since it works normaly in windows wouldent that indicate its formatted properly?
My drive D in repair happens to be my drive D also in windows. From what you ststed that doesnt mean anything.

Meant to ask -- are you saying that although the windows system listed as on drive E can be restored and the restored image will be Drive C in windows?

"the windows system listed as on drive E" this isn't a problem at all! Maybe you can set usb to "legacy mode" in bios (just temporary to restore).

Using a live boot disk/USB stick such as the System Repair CD, assume drive letters can take on totally different letters. Give the drives a label or identify them by their contents.

Your problem really appears to be that an existing image on an external HDD cannot be auto located correct?
1) Have you ever been able to auto locate the image?
2) Are you using USB 3?