New
#1
External Drive Problem After Creating Macrium Rescue Disc
I'll explain my problem in the order it occurred:
1. I completely uninstalled Acronis TIH 2012 yesterday and rebooted. Everything was as it should be.
2. I had in excess of 700GB unallocated space on my internal drive; I successfully created two equal logical partitions out of this unallocated space and Windows labeled them as drive L and drive M. I could still see my two external drives, the drive letters as they have always been, being drive J and drive K. No problem.
3. I installed Macrium Reflect for the purpose of creating backups and created a backup of the OS partition located on my internal drive, saving it to my external J drive. No problem.
4.I decided today that I would create a Macrium Rescue CD, using the default Linux boot method. No problem.
5.I booted with the Macrium Rescue CD so that I was sure the rescue CD would recognize the location of my Macrium backup on drive J. If not, I would then have run the rescue CD in compatibility mode. The Macrium rescue CD recognized my external J drive and K drive but the drives would not expand so that I could locate the Macrium backup. It appeared as if they were there but empty.
6. I removed the Macrium Rescue CD and rebooted. I checked Computer and Computer Management and the only thing listed was my internal C drive. The two newly created logical partitions, L and M, did not show either in Computer or Computer Management. In addition, the listings for these "Devices with Removable Storage, did not show in Computer: DVD RW Drive (D) , BD-ROM Drive (E) , SD/mini-MMC/RS, CF/MD, SM/xD and MS/Pro/Duo were missing and not listed.
6. I unplugged both external drives, J and K, and replugged them. No go. I then turned them off and restarted them. No go. I then turned them off, unplugged them and rebooted, turning them back on after logging into Windows. No go. I then turned off the computer, unplugged the computer and held down on the computer's power button for appx. twenty seconds, replugged the computer and started it. I still had only the C drive showing in both Computer and Computer Management. Furthermore, I noticed that all my AutoPlay configurations had gone back to "Choose a default setting" or whatever it normally says.
7. I then searched, on the Internet, for appx. one hour, trying to find a solution to the problem, to no avail.
8. I did a System Restore to yesterday, which completed successfully. This restore point was after I had installed Macrium Reflect, which of course was not removed during the restore and is still on my computer.
9. I am now able to see all the drives but the drive letters have been changed. Drive C, of course, remains Drive C. The two logical partitions I created on the internal drive are now showing, in both Computer and Computer Management, as F and G, instead of the initial listings as L and M. The Devices with Removable Storage are also now showing in Computer but the drive letters have been changed, with the exception of D and E, which remain D and E. I have no idea what Devices with Removable Storage SD/mini-MMC/RS, CF/MD, SM/xD and MS/Pro/Duo are but the drive letters for all of them have also changed, which is to be expected if the two newly created logical partitions on my internal drive changed letters. I don't know if this will cause problems and as I have stated I don't even know what they are. Talk about a novice!
Can anyone explain to me what caused this problem, why the internal drive letters changed and what these "Devices with Removable Storage" are and if they will be adversely affected by the change in drive letters? The drive letters of my two external drives did not change at any time. They listed and remain listed as drives J and K. I have added no new programs, made no changes or done anything that would have caused this with the exception of creating and booting the Macrium Reflect Rescue CD.
Update: My AutoPlay configurations have changed back to the default "Choose a default setting" two times in the past thirty minutes. I don't know if they will change again.
C.B.
Last edited by CBM; 22 Sep 2011 at 13:57.