Solved How to change active partition without removing data from partition?

[MarkRocketman]

Hi Folks, I have contrived to get two active partitions on my PC! After a 2 week old hard drive (D: & F -) died I replaced (now F & G) it with an old drive that had previously been configured with XP and as a boot drive. I don’t think it is acting as boot as drive C: has an active partition and boot and largely the computer runs fine with the exception of G not being search / index able? And there being a phantom path in the backup which I can’t reset. So the question!
How do I remove the active setting on G: (it holds all the variable windows data) and will it lose all the data?
Im at that point where a little knowledge is dangerous and have seen some genius replies so thought I would ask and see if you could help me out.

See attached screen shot

NB The old drive partitions were formatted before being repopulated

 

[solarmystic]

Hello and welcome to the forums MarkRocketman!

You can easily change the active/inactive flag on a partition easily by following these steps:-

Removing the Active Flag from a Partition
(on a drive that's not currenly being used as a boot drive)

First, open an elevated command prompt in Windows:-

1. Click Start Orb
2. In search box, type cmd
3. Right-click on cmd.exe, and choose 'Run as Administrator'

In the elevated command prompt type in the following commands:-

Diskpart
LIST DISK
SELECT DISK n (where n is the number of the HDD in question)
LIST PARTITION
SELECT PARTITION n (where n is the number of the Partition that holds G)
INACTIVE


Hope that helps!

EDIT:- As a supplementary addition here's how change it back to active:-

LIST PARTITION
SELECT PARTITION n (where n is the number of the Partition you want to activate)
ACTIVE
Exit (to exit Diskpart)

　

 

[MarkRocketman]

Ha you found both my post's. I realised that this one was marked solved so I really appreciate how hard you help. Mark

 

[solarmystic]

No worries mate, that's what we're here for!