Windows 7: Last Logical Drives Dissapear

Hello Everybody

I've bought this Sragate 500GB (Recognized as 465GB) HDD and moved everyhing into it. Partitioned it during 7 installation and here are my partitions all in NTFS:

Primary (101MB) - NTFS - Created during Windows 7 setup - I'll delete when I'm ready to install a new OS
Primary (75GB) - NTFS - Windows 7 is installed here
Primary (25GB) - NTFS - WinXP SP3 is here

Extended (around 365GB) - and I'm having problems inside it
--------First Logical (350GB) - NTFS
--------A remaining size of 15.62GB (15998MB) that may consist of one or some logical drives

I installed my Windows 7 and winxp in the 2nd and 3rd primary and I switch between these two by activaving the appropriate one. when I'm in XP and activate 75GB primart to boot in Windows 7 something strange happens:

Except the 1st logical drive, any other logical drive I have after it dissapears and turns into unpartitioned space. and it seems to be a bug of windows disk management tool or limitation in winxp. the point is that there's no such a problem when I do the same in Windows 7 exactly.

Can anybody give me some advice how to fix this?

There's a danger that my 350GB drive fades away some day with all data in it! I think.

Here's a screenshot of this irregularity:



http://gotsharing.com/images/lastlogica.jpg

thanks in advance

Any Ideas?

ned, welcome to the forums

I am in doubt about your procedure. Do I understand correctly you change the active partitions everytime you want to boot on a different OS? Why don't you simply use a multi-boot configuration?

If you want a correct dual boot menu setup, then boot into Windows 7 and run a repair install:

Start your Windows 7 installer from the desktop, choose Upgrade and it will save everything in place but reinstall the OS and correctly configure the boot menu.

You will need to reactivate afterwards at Computer>Properties link.

Choosing to boot a partition each time by marking it Active is asking for trouble.

Always back up all of your files externally. And if you use Windows 7 backup imaging to store a HDD image externally then you will never again need to reinstall since you can reimage your HDD (or a replacement) using your Windows 7 installer repair console in 15 minutes.

The 100mb boot/repair partition makes the repair console also available at boot via F8.

Thanks everybody and pls pardon me for this late reply

The only reason I don't like a multi-boot configuration is that I don't want my OSes interfere with each other in their system drives (I don't assign any letter to 7's drive in win xp and vice versa). Besides, The procedure of adding a new OS or removing an old one will be more more simple with absolutely no side effects on the currently installed OSes.

Dear gregrocker, I can't get what you mean. Does activating another primary involves with any danger of data loss?

Oh really? I didn't know that. I'll put it into consideration next time. But it wastes one of primaries, doesn't?

Thanks for replies
and sorry for my bad english