Solved Non-system drive appearing when creating system image.

[hatemf23]

hi,

I tried to take a system image today for a newly installed windows and was surprised that it offered me to create an image for C: and E: listing E: as a system drive and no option to change... with E: really being a full 500 gb separate disk. it has no system files that I know of... why is it doing this?

 

[Brink]

Hello hatemf23,

If you moved or turned on a page file to/for the E: drive, or moved your user folders to the E: drive, then it would be considered a system drive and would be included in a system image by default without being able to unselect it.

In addition, could you post a screenshot of your Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc) window showing your HDD's layout to see if anything may stand out as why this may be.

Hope this may help some,
Shawn

 

[hatemf23]

I see, how do I turn off page file for E? here you go:

 

[Brink]

The links in my post above will show you how to, but page file is not your issue here.



It appears that you need mark your C: partition as active, and mark your E: drive as inactive.

• http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/71432-partition-mark-active.html
• http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/197157-partition-mark-inactive.html

Afterwards, you may need to run startup repair at boot on your C: (Vista) partition.

Hope this helps,

Shawn

 

[hatemf23]

Ok, I marked C active and marked E inactive, and had to use system repair like you said, cause I got a "BOOTMGR is missing" but then system repair made E active again.. why is the boot manager in E to begin with?

This is strange actually, right after windows finished installing, the Disk 1 (now named E) didnt even have a letter and wasnt showing up on on my computer, I manually assign a letter to it and it turns into the system partition... lol

 

[Corazon]

That's unusual indeed!

It might be a good idea to follow Brink's advice again, but this time, after you make C: active and E: inactive, physically disconnect the E: harddisk before you start running the startup repair 3 times.

That way it won't have any choice but to place the boot files on the first drive. One can only hope that it doesn't just go for the D: partition instead. LOL

 

[Brink]

That is strange. Must have been some weird setup issue when you installed previously for it to use E like that.

I'd recommend doing what Corazon posted above as well by disconnecting the E: drive afterwards.

When you mark the E: drive as inactive, does it remove the "System" status as well afterwards?

 

[hatemf23]

Worked like magic E is not system partition any more.

The question is though, would this happen again with another install? putting boot manager in E and all of that?

How do I make sure E doesnt have any system files?

 

[whs]

Yeah, it can happen any time. The installer seems to have strange ways grabbing random partitions to place the bootmgr - usually the first one it finds. On one of my systems it grabbed a data partition on another drive (I was unable to unplug that drive. The plugs seemed to be "welded" to the HDD. So much for Dell).

I understand you can control that by making the drive on which you install #1 in the BIOS boot sequence. But I have not yet tried that.

 

[Brink]

That's great news Hatemf.

Other than not moving your page file or system/user folders to the E: drive, having the C: drive listed first in the boot order as WHS posted should help prevent E: from becoming a system drive again.