Disk numbers in Disk Management matters?

After adding two new SATA hard drives in my computer, I noticed that Disk Management lists SATA Drive C (which contains Win 7) as Disk 2. The other two drives are listed as Disk 0 and Disk 1.

Since I connected SATA Drive C in SATA port 1, I was expecting to see it listed as Disk 0. SATA drives D and E are connected to SATA port 2 and 3 but are listed before the one connected in SATA port 1. Weird!

And since the computer seems to work fine, I'm wondering if the disk numbers listed in Disk Management matter at all? Please let me know if this is normal or if I should change something.

Thanks!

I had the same issue, physically by connecting sata cables disk 1 for XP, disk 2 for Data and disk 3 for Win 7. When initially booting into XP system and going to computer/properties/manage/disk mgr, it showed XP on 0, data on 1 and Win7 on 2. Booting into Win7 and doing the same, the disks were listed as the same, i.e. XP = Win7 = actual physical cable layout. However, on a number of occassions booting into Win7, the drives can be in any order. Machine works and boots OK, guess they are using virtual drives. BTW W7 seems a million times faster than XP :) Mike

Check your HD listing in BIOS.

ypm said:

And since the computer seems to work fine, I'm wondering if the disk numbers listed in Disk Management matter at all? Please let me know if this is normal or if I should change something.

Thanks!

The assigned disk numbers should not matter.

You just need to be able to understand what Disc 0, Disc 1, etc really mean so you are not personally confused. Confusion could lead to writing to the wrong partition, re-formatting he wrong partition, etc.

But as long as you have it straight in your mind which is which, I wouldn't change things--unless you are obsessive enough that you will lay in bed thinking about it.

[/QUOTE]
But as long as you have it straight in your mind which is which, I wouldn't change things--unless you are obsessive enough that you will lay in bed thinking about it.[/QUOTE]

Thanks for confirming that these disk numbers do not matter. I didn't lose sleep over it and now I won't even have a second thought about them!

But as long as you have it straight in your mind which is which, I wouldn't change things--unless you are obsessive enough that you will lay in bed thinking about it.

Thanks for confirming that these disk numbers do not matter. I didn't lose sleep over it and now I won't even have a second thought about them!

They could possibly matter in one instance. When Windows logs an event about a disk (bad sector, error detecting during paging operation, etc.) it will use the disk number to identify the disk in question.

So if the disk numbers can change each time you boot this could cause some problems identifying the disk mentioned in the event.

And yes, I have noticed the same phenomenon. First I had one disk only connected to SATA1. After installing Windows 7 it had disk number 0 as expected. Then I added two more disks to SATA2 and SATA3. And now I just noticed that these are getting disk numbers 0 and 1 respectively in Disk Management while my first disk (an SSD) have to be satisfied with getting disk number 2.

(Can mention that I changed the assigned drive letters of some card reader drives after installing Windows and before noticing this; I removed the drive letters for those and set them to mount in NTFS folders instead to save the drive letters for more important things. Could possibly have affected the disk numbering I guess)

Edit: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/937251

Well, now I understand the advice to remove all but the target disk while installing Windows. You don't want to get the hidden boot partition set to another hard drive. :)

That's pretty good for your first post nickbackm.

I have the same issue (drive numbering does not match SATA numbering). This changes the Windows Experience index for my primary hard drive from 7.8 (when my SSD drive is correctly identified as primary) to 5.9 (when my HDD is incorrectly identified as primary).

Brandon

ola,
i'm new at this forum and i know that this is an older thread but I have the same problem. previusly i had 3 sata disks connected through standard sata2 ports 1, 2 and 3 with my os on 1st disk and 1st partition withouth 100mb sys. reservated partition. now i bought ssd sata 6gb and connected him on first of two sata 6gb ports to be my system disk. I expected to see him on the position of disk 0 in disk management especially becouse I disconnected disk 0 from sata 1 port during the installation of windows after that I connected him format and repartition it. what I get is properly assigned drive letter C: for my ssd but position is disk 3 in disk management, not to mention sys. res. 100mb partition in front of system C: partition with drive letter I: wich is not the main problem becouse with fresh installation of win could be solved. main problem is hdd's lineup becouse i belive that for proper comunication between components they should be sort in some kind of hierarcy order depending on port physical position. maybe i'm wrong but in worst case it looks decent. i was looking through this topic for solution but i saw only conclusions and simlarities with my problems also on the microsoft site. does someone have concrete solution for this problem, please help.

There isn't any hierarchical order but as a rule of thumb it's best to have the OS HD in SATA1/DIsk0 slot so that the boot files can't be derailed to an earlier partition that is accidentally marked "Active."

The installer and Startup Repair will write or move the System boot files to the first Active partition.