That's the way I'd go in your situation. Only if you're heavily into multi booting would I have a rethink.
It's quite straight forward, just remember to unplug H. Make sure C: (SSD) is booting on it's own and then with other HDD plugged in. Then clean up the remnant 100MB partition.
I used to be in multi-booting, including Linux; I've never cleaned up afterward, other than the Linux partitions. Having four drives in the box made me lazy and I still have these OS's on the drives:
- Drive D: Windows Vista
- Drive G: Windows 7 Evaluation version
- Drive H: Windows 7 Professional (previous version)
No wonder that installing a new version of Windows 7 on the SSD drive put the system partition on H. It already had the system partition and the installation just changed the boot order. In retrospect...
Interestingly, the evaluation version that I haven't booted in years does boot up just fine despite the change in CPU, motherboard, etc.
The C drive is marked active...
Would it better to use the installation DVD instead of the repair disk I've created? The latter one may restore the current system partition content, while the installation DVD knows nothing about current system partition. It seems logical, but could be wrong...
The "up to 3 separate times" part does not give me much confidence in the process. It seems that this is the automated recovery process that requires booting in to Windows as well between the reboot. Wouldn't this repair process (manual process?) do the same?
It seems that this would not require booting in to Windows at all.bootrec /fixboot
This should fix it, if not, restart repair process and run this command:
bootrec /rebuildbcd
Thanks guys...
I'm sure you have your reasons as to why you don't like. But I'm just curious to know what you don't like about it if you don't mind telling us. I use it on a regular basis and have had no problems. A couple of times I even restored an image and it restored it back to exactly what it was. Of course, just because I like it, doesn't necessarily mean that everyone has to like it.
The DVD Repair console and Repair CD are identical WinRe - use either. When 100mb is installed WinRE is also conveniently placed on the F8 advanced boot tools menu, though subject to corruption along with OS in some cases.
It's best to let Startup Repair run the bootrec commands along with the other tests done in automated order sometimes requiring restart(s) to apply the fix(es).
You're certainly welcome to use the older methods if you feel better, but Win7 Startup Repair is fully automated with all commands and fixes.
The exception is when no OS shows up in WinRE to repair. Running bootrec /fixmbr and /fixboot can sometimes force it to show up so repairs can proceed.
Let us know how it goes. If you'd like further help in removing the archived OS's you can post back a screenshot of your full Disk Mgmt drive map/listings with all drives plugged, using Snipping Tool in Start Menu.
I agree with Greg and I'd be using the "automated" startup repair in the first instance. It has a record of getting it right and doing the repairs in the correct order.
Based on popularity, I did run the repair disk created yesterday...:)
After the first time booting in to the repair disk, the automated process did ask to reboot. Booting into the repair disk at the second time has taken substantially longer, but it did get there; I guess during this time the boot records were created. Once the repair disk came on, it stated that the repair had been completed and Windows is ready to boot from the drive. It did and tested it couple of times without any issues; thanks guys!!
You know, I've been using Windows 7 for couple of years now, including the evaluation version, but I've never used the snipping tool; nice one...
The Disk Manager has 11 or 12 disks showing up, main reason is that I've replaced the floppy drive with a memory card reader. That added four or five drives, two CD/DVD burners, and plus now there's five physical disks in this desktop. When I put in couple of USB devices, it can get really messy with the drive letters. Here's an image of the relevant disks and please note, I renamed them to keep track of the drives:
Disk_Mgmt.jpg
Drive K is new and it is the previous boot/system partition. I can browse it, add, delete, etc, within that partition. I could just delete the partition and extend the H drive, but there's no use. I am planning to remove both of the a create a single partition anyway. And before I forget....
Drive K, marked as "System Reserved" in the image, has used 31.8 MBs of disk space. I am not certain as to what actually happened, but the disk image creation does work now. Despite the fact that I do not see "System Reserved" partition being part disk 4. The boot loader must be somewhere since I can boot this drive without an issue.
Looking at the drive in CMD window with the "dir /ah" command shows the folder named "Boot" and a file named "bootmgr", among others of course. It seems that the recovery disk just dumped everything in the C drive, certainly at strategical places. As long as it works and recoverable via the disk image, no argument from me, that would be just dandy.
I guess the only question that remains is the system reserved drive....
Is it "normal" under Windows 7 that there's no system reserved drive and the boot manager resides within the "C" drive?
I'm trying to recap on your thread again. There was another similar one.
To answer your question. It is ok that the SSD has the 100MB system reserved, active function incorporated into the one OS partition (your SSD, C: ). Some people much prefer it that way.
We got to the stage that C: was booting by itself and not through your now disk 0. Ideally your C: should be disk 0. Try
1) swapping cables on Disk0 & 4 and make sure everything boots ok.
2) What do you want to use K:, H: for?
Quick aside: an area of confusion is that in Windows 7, MS name their main boot function "system" and their OS partition "Boot" (presumably because the OS boot loading winload.exe lives there). Other 3rd party software will use reverse naming.
As long as the backed up image can be restored, I am fine with that. Having the boot records incorporated into the C drive does eliminate SVS related errors, which is a plus.
Well, that's not up to me; that's how the BIOS sees them and hands it over to the OS. Disks 0 through 3 are on the SATA 2.0 bus while disk 4 is on the SATA 3.0 bus. I could select any of the disks to boot in the BIOS; the current disk 0 used to be disk 2 until I've replaced the motherboard and messed up the cabling. In either case, I cannot make disk 4 to look as disk 0 for the OS.We got to the stage that C: was booting by itself and not through your now disk 0. Ideally your C: should be disk 0. Try
1) swapping cables on Disk0 & 4 and make sure everything boots ok.
2) What do you want to use K:, H: for?
K&H will be deleted and create a single partition used for storage. Alternatively, I might get a SATA 2.0 PCIe RAID card and collect all four mechanical drive hard drives in to a RAID 0. The transfer rate of this RAID would be pretty close to the SSD drive's performance.
I'll keep that in mind at least until the SATA 2.0 drives are cleaned up.Quick aside: an area of confusion is that in Windows 7, MS name their main boot function "system" and their OS partition "Boot" (presumably because the OS boot loading winload.exe lives there). Other 3rd party software will use reverse naming.
You and Greg have been very helpful and thank you guys for your help...
Last edited by Cr00zng; 01 Jan 2011 at 16:52. Reason: Grammar, at least what I know about...
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