Disk Management (Snap in) shows swaped Disk0=D and Disk1=C

[BostonDriver]

When starting a backup (Acronis), I noticed that my C: drive was now "Disk 1" and my D: drive now "Disk 0".

I verified this using Computer Management > Disk Management

I had this happen with Disk2=E and Disk3=F becoming Disk2=F and Disk3=E. I've removed them from the system as a result. It's also why I'm doing a full C: image backup.

Is there a reason the disk to drive letter is changing?

I'm using Windows 7 Pro, 64bit

Thanks

 

[TVeblen]

On a SATA controller there is no order to attached drives. All SATA drives are treated the same and managed (initially) by the BIOS/UEFI without any preference to one over another. Old folks like me who remember IDE drives and the importance of Master/Slave positioning get hung up on the drive order, but we will learn!
So the short answer is fugetaboutit.

Long answer: The BIOS/UEFI is only concerned with finding the bootable drives and locating the boot manager files. Once a boot manager is found it hands off control. The OS then controls the partition management and disk order. Each physical hard drive has a unique identifying number that the system and OS can keep track of. Windows will assign Disk 0 to the first drive it encounters and record it that way by identifier. You would think the first drive it would recognize would be the one plugged into SATA port 1 but that is not always the case, sometimes it is just the drive that is ready and accessed first.

So if you really need to arrange the drives "in order" then the thing to do is to shut down > disconnect all hard drives except the one with the OS > Optional: make sure the drive is connected to SATA port 1 > start the computer and let Windows load fully > check DM to see that the one hard drive is Disk 0 > Shut down again > connect the hard drive you want to be Disk 1 > Start up, and so on.

The "correct" order should stick after that.
Hope that helps!

 

[BostonDriver]

Old folks like me who remember IDE drives and the importance of Master/Slave positioning get hung up on the drive order, but we will learn!
So the short answer is fugetaboutit.

Old folks like me remember VM/370 and card punches

On the same HW (I swap some of the disks) booting FreeBSD and Fedora keep things "in order", even before I started using UUID. So I wanted to check and understand what was going on.

So if you really need to arrange the drives "in order" then the thing to do is to shut down > disconnect all hard drives except the one with the OS > Optional: make sure the drive is connected to SATA port 1 > start the computer and let Windows load fully > check DM to see that the one hard drive is Disk 0 > Shut down again > connect the hard drive you want to be Disk 1 > Start up, and so on.

I did this once. But I change drives so often I'm guessing "un-did" things. I'll live.

Thanks for the reply

 

[TVeblen]

Ah yes... If you are changing the drives out often then just let thing be. The system doesn't care so why should we?

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

...So if you really need to arrange the drives "in order" then the thing to do is to shut down > disconnect all hard drives except the one with the OS > Optional: make sure the drive is connected to SATA port 1 > start the computer and let Windows load fully > check DM to see that the one hard drive is Disk 0 > Shut down again > connect the hard drive you want to be Disk 1 > Start up, and so on.

The "correct" order should stick after that.
Hope that helps!

Sorry, I've found that doesn't always work. In my case, as soon as I add back second drive after the boot drive, the boot drive changes to disk 1 and the second drive becomes 0. I've also tried swapping ports, spitting into the wind, etc. to no avail.

 

[TVeblen]

I wonder why that is? I have 4 rigs going and the hard drives stay put. Maybe they are just afraid of me!

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I wonder why that is? I have 4 rigs going and the hard drives stay put. Maybe they are just afraid of me!

Wanna come over and scare mine?

 

[TVeblen]

Heh Heh. That could be my new thing. Instead of the Horse Whisperer, I can be the Hard Drive Frightener!

I suspect that in cases like yours, and possibly the OP's too, is that the hard disk that you want to be Disk 0 is just slower to be enumerated (recognized and 'named' by the base system) then the faster drive that "steals the spot" every time you start up. Keep in mind that by speed I am not talking about data transfer speed - this is just the speed of the firmware to announce it's presence to the BIOS/UEFI.

Here is the MS explanation of the phenomenon in case anyone thinks I'm making this up :
Disk drive numbers may not correspond as expected to the SATA channel numbers when you install Windows on a computer that has multiple SATA or RAID disks

I have seen posts where people claim that they could go into the BIOS and change the order of the drives there - making their target Disk 0 to be listed as SATA 1. I am skeptical. The only way I know of to change the BIOS order is to physically plug the target drive into SATA port 1. But I only know the BIOS I have worked with - I may not know what I do not know about other BIOS/UEFI setups.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

...I suspect that in cases like yours, and possibly the OP's too, is that the hard disk that you want to be Disk 0 is just slower to be enumerated (recognized and 'named' by the base system) then the faster drive that "steals the spot" every time you start up...

A 2TB WD Black spinner is faster than a 128GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD?

Put on your most frightening face when you come over.

 

[incurablegeek]

So if you really need to arrange the drives "in order" then the thing to do is to shut down > disconnect all hard drives except the one with the OS > Optional: make sure the drive is connected to SATA port 1 > start the computer and let Windows load fully > check DM to see that the one hard drive is Disk 0 > Shut down again > connect the hard drive you want to be Disk 1 > Start up, and so on.

The "correct" order should stick after that.

Not wishing to be disruptive or rambunctious here, but I can assure you the above suggestion does not work. Please see attached snippet of my clean install.

As with all installs, I place my SSD on SATA 1 and Optical 1 on SATA 5. I set SATA 1-6 to AHCI (opticals don't need IDE, happy with AHCI). When I do a clean install (hundreds so far), I never, ever connect the other drives - just the OS/Programs drive at SATA 1, and the Boot Optical on SATA 5.

Result: Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit arranges the drives in a nicely chaotic order.

Oh, am I too remember card punches and then CP/M. I just didn't have the courage to admit it.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

So if you really need to arrange the drives "in order" then the thing to do is to shut down > disconnect all hard drives except the one with the OS > Optional: make sure the drive is connected to SATA port 1 > start the computer and let Windows load fully > check DM to see that the one hard drive is Disk 0 > Shut down again > connect the hard drive you want to be Disk 1 > Start up, and so on.

The "correct" order should stick after that.

Not wishing to be disruptive or rambunctious here, but I can assure you the above suggestion does not work. Please see attached snippet of my clean install.

As with all installs, I place my SSD on SATA 1 and Optical 1 on SATA 5. I set SATA 1-6 to AHCI (opticals don't need IDE, happy with AHCI). When I do a clean install (hundreds so far), I never, ever connect the other drives - just the OS/Programs drive at SATA 1, and the Boot Optical on SATA 5.

Result: Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit arranges the drives in a nicely chaotic order.

Oh, am I too remember card punches and then CP/M. I just didn't have the courage to admit it.

My recent build had the same experience.

I don't remember card punchers but I remember the cards and having to file them (even worse was the huge data cards and the machine that was used to manually heat transfer the data onto them, one line at a time). I do remember notch punchers for 5.25" floppy disks (and have one knocking about somewhere along with a bunch of the floppies.

 

[incurablegeek]

This forum is beginning to sound like a bunch of old farts commiserating at the local nursing home. I may need to look elsewhere for people more my age.

Btw, I was just kidding about remember all that old stuff.

Pacman anyone? A game of checkers perhaps? :shock:

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

This forum is beginning to sound like a bunch of old farts commiserating at the local nursing home. I may need to look elsewhere for people more my age.

Btw, I was just kidding about remember all that old stuff.

Pacman anyone? A game of checkers perhaps? :shock:

Of course you were kidding. Btw, I prefer flatulent geriatric.

 

[essenbe]

For those of you old people who care, mine are in the correct order in Disk Management and diskpart. I set up my machine the way TV said in the beginning. I suspect that they will stay that way until I add a new disk or replace one. The drive letters do not matter. The order in which they are presented into the computer do. It seems to me, Windows assigns them a unique number when first presented to it and they are listed in the order of those numbers. If you introduce a new disk it is given a new number and will be listed sequentially in that order. If you place a disk from another machine that has already been assigned a unique number, the ordering system for Windows is thrown off. At least that's what I think.

 

[incurablegeek]

Of course you were kidding.

Yes, let no one misunderstand my odd brand of humor. For what it's worth I was the class clown in school - kinda carried on into life.

I can still remember my 5th grade teacher, "Dennis, go to the principal's office. You know the way by now." :devil:

 

[essenbe]

We are in the middle of the onslaught of technology, but some things never change.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

For those of you old people who care, mine are in the correct order in Disk Management and diskpart. I set up my machine the way TV said in the beginning. I suspect that they will stay that way until I add a new disk or replace one. The drive letters do not matter. The order in which they are presented into the computer do. It seems to me, Windows assigns them a unique number when first presented to it and they are listed in the order of those numbers. If you introduce a new disk it is given a new number and will be listed sequentially in that order. If you place a disk from another machine that has already been assigned a unique number, the ordering system for Windows is thrown off. At least that's what I think.

You may be onto something there. I originally formatted and tested the SSD in a USB dock connected to my notebook but, when I put it in my new computer and installed the OS, I deleted the partition I had put on it. The E:/ drive was brand new and also formatted and tested the same way. The F:/ drive was originally in my XP machine and had the C:/ partition removed and the remaining partition expanded and relettered and renamed also using a dock connected to my notebook.

Would reformatting the two spinners while inatalled in the new machime fix the issue? Or would I be spinning my wheels?

 

[TVeblen]

I think spinning your wheels. That unique identifier is on the firmware side of things so formatting will do nothing to change any of that.

The key here for everyone is that it just doesn't matter (to the OS. To we humans it drives us nuts).

Now here is what I am thinking: if the OS is keeping track of these identifiers then they are most likely recorded and ordered in the registry. That means there must be a way to tweak that list (or kill the system in trying). Maybe we can get that guy who wanted to compress his disk to give a try! :devil:

 

[essenbe]

Well, that debunks my theory. But, it was a good try. For those of you here that don't know, never doubt TVeblen. He is the Master of all things. I do not recall ever being on a thread with him and he did not know the answer, and it was the correct answer, or not knowable.

 

[TVeblen]

That is not true