Don't Know Why

[treadhead194]

I have a Seagate Barracuda 500gig drive that knocks my C (Western Digital Velociraptor 300gig)drive from Disk 0 to Disk 1. Originally the Seagate was my C but after getting my Velociraptor I changed.
I have run DISKPART-Clean[all] on the Seagate but it doesn't do any good, it still knocks C out. I have run DISKPART-select disk - list partition- active on C drive and then attached the Seagate. If I go to Administrative Tools\Computer Management\Disk Management, it will list C drive as 0 and the Seagate as Disk 1, but if I do a restart and check again the Seagate is listed as Disk 0 and C drive as Disk 1.
I have 3 other drives, 2 Western Digital and 1 is my DVD and I can do the same, install, check, restart, check and they don't touch the C drive only the Seagate.
Has anyone ever run into this before and if so how did you fix it?

 

[treadhead194]

Oops, I forgot to mention I'm running Windows 7 Home Premium with all updates

 

[OldMX]

AFAIK its a windows issue introduced on Vista release and never fixed, actually MS is clueless about how to deal with it. The disk drive numbers may not correspond as expected to the SATA channel numbers when you set up Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, or Windows 7 on a computer that has multiple SATA or RAID disks

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Hello treadhead194, welcome to Seven Forums!


I have the same issues, it happens (for me) when I add / re-arrange HDDs after Windows 7 has been installed, I'm in the process of more work on this, I'll post back here if I get anything conclusive.

 

[treadhead194]

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one having this kind of trouble. I also posted in the Seagate forums to see if someone there has seen the same problem. If I hear anything I'll post and let you know.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

OK mate, I'll be around!

 

[treadhead194]

Hey, Bare Foot Kid, do you have mixed disks or are they all the same? I have two external Western digitals for a total of 5 disks connected, yet the are not interfering with C. Now, maybe they have to be internal and not external to cause the problem. I'm going to shut down and install the internally and see what happens. Let you know how it goes.

 

[mjf]

My Disk 0 is on sata port 6 (3G) containing system reserved & the boot/OS partition.
My Port 1 is a 6G.
My BIOS HDD boot priority is port 6 first.

I'm aware of the MS link given earlier but does it really matter as long as your BIOS port boot priority is set correctly.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

I just found out that SATA disks can (virtually of course) switch positions when they feel like it and out of nowhere you end up booting from ''physical disk 1'' instead of 0. :shock: A reboot reversed the change. Google delivered this splendid consolation.

Mega-weird.

I've been saying this for a while but no one pays me any attention.

This is connected to the #1 SATA port of the mobo and set as the first boot device and it was the only HDD connected for the clean install.

Originally the "Movies" HDD was Disk 2 after the others were reconnected but that changed also at a later time.

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Have a look at this.

 

[mjf]

The MS KB article
The disk drive numbers may not correspond as expected to the SATA channel numbers when you set up Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, or Windows 7 on a computer that has multiple SATA or RAID disks

states
"By default, the 100MB system partition is created on the disk that is detected as Disk 0. If you install Windows to a disk other than Disk 0, the 100MB system partition will still be created on Disk 0 during the installation."

Is it a separate System Reserved partition which is triggering the Disk 0 allocation?

BFK in your example you don't have a separate System reserved.

 

[treadhead194]

If you install Windows 7 32bit it does create a 100mb system partition however I notice that if you install Win 7 64bit there is no 100mb system partition. I just happen to notice this when I had installed Win 7 32bit and was changing to the 64bit OS. If the 32bit creates the partition why not the 64bit? I checked this out using DISKPART. Also when I did a clean install I had disconnected all other hard drives so a seperate partition could not have been created on another hard drive. Yet when another hard drive is connected, and you check, C is disk 0, however when you reboot, C is kicked out and Disk 0 is now Disk 1. I also noticed something a few minutes ago when Windows boots, after connecting another disk a message came up on the boot screen saying something about "Windows Machine". I couldn't read it all cause it went by so fast. I'm not a computer whiz but I would venture to say something is screwy with the OS and if Microsoft doesn't know how to fix it, then I guess we'll just have to live with it. As long as my system works, I'm happy, even though it's wrong.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Is it a separate System Reserved partition which is triggering the Disk 0 allocation?

BFK in your example you don't have a separate System reserved.

I know mate, I've just done about 4 straight back to back clean installs to this PC and I'm seeing (in my case) when I change the installer issued drive letters the disk numbers change.

I've changed HDDs to a couple brand new ones but that has had no inpact on this as the 'new' HDDs (disk numbers) are acting the same as the 'old' HDDs did.

No I have no System Reserved added, so image creation and use will be way easier.

Here's with the installer issued drive letters, I'm not going to change them to see if the Disk numbers slip again.

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[Bare Foot Kid]

Now look at this POS, I just did a restart and see what it is now! :shock:

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[mjf]

No I have no System Reserved added, so image creation and use will be way easier.

Here's with the installer issued drive letters, I'm not going to change them to see if the Disk numbers slip again.

I take your first point. But your last post says they did slip again.
I know it's a long shot but you could try putting in a separate system reserved and see what happens. My curiosity - your effort!

 

[treadhead194]

To mfj: After installing Win 7 32bit (which I didn't want in the first place, I wanted Win 7 64bit), and after finding out about DISKPART (I'm not a computer whiz) I found that Win 7 32 does create a 100mb system partition on disk 0. However, Win 7 64bit does not, again using DISKPART. When I did a clean install I disconnected all drives but C and did a clean install. Checking again with DISKPART there is no 100mb system partition in Win 7 64bit, it is all one partition. WHY does Win 32 create a partition where Win 64 does not? If the system partition is truely needed then Win 64 needs to be fixed.
Now, in my situation I think I figured out how to keep C as Disk 0. My motherboard is a P55 FTW 200 made by EVGA. There are 3 rows of sata ports. The sata ports are set as: (top set) 0 next to the motherboard, 1-on top of 0,(middle set) 2 next to the mb, 3 on top of 2, (bottom set) 4 next to mb and 5 -on top of 4.
My understanding is that C is to be set to sata 0, D to sata 1, E to sata 2 and so on. Whell, I did just that and I kept loosing C from Disk 0 to Disk 1. So I tried something else. I connected C to sata 0 and D to sata 2, did a reeboot and C was still Disk 0. I connected D drive to sata 4, did a reboot and C was still Disk 0, I connected my DVD to sata 1, did a reeboot and C was still Disk 0, I did another reeboot cause I couldn't believe it and C was still Disk 0. Now I'm not saying that all is well in Never Never land cause I do believe in Murphy's law, but for now everything is where it should be, but who knows, I may shut down tonight and tomorrow C drive just may be disk 5.

 

[mjf]

Windows 7 x64 will create the system reserved. Your problem must have something to do with the state of the HDD you installed to.
If you clean install to an unallocated disk it will create the 100MB partition.

I decided to have a system reserved but wanted 200MB (better to avoid some Windows imaging problems).
1) create a 200MB primary partition and mark it active. This will be your system reserved.
2) create an adjacent X GB (X= 100-200GB say) partition to hold your OS (Boot,...) partition.

Do a clean install and that's it.

 

[treadhead194]

After 6 reboots and 1 complete shutdown here's what I got:

 

[treadhead194]

After 6 reboots and 1 complete shutdown here's what I got:

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

OK your suggestion and my work, perhaps they won't slip now.


@treadhead194, sorry mate, I'm not ignoring you, I'm going to go back and read through your posts and communicate with you over this.


Here's my current situation.

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[Bare Foot Kid]

Oh well, that didn't do it.

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