Partitions gone after Reboot

[Jeetje]

Tried to find this on the forums, but didn't find a thread that truly matched my issue.

Issue is rather simple:
2 HD's wherof one is C: with the OS and the other one on which I try to make two partitions for Blah1 and Blah2. Works like a charm; the partitions appear, I can see them at the jolly My Computer window - no problem.

However, once I reboot they're gone afterwards and there's only C: there (at the My Computer window).
They do, however, still show up in the System Management Disc Partition creation (thingy)[...] And yes I can assign new drive names, but after rebooting it's the same anticlimaxing, rickrolling 'tadaa'. Tried using a third party Partition Creation Di--thingy, but the end result was the same: partitions that 'disappear' after rebooting.

Formatted, removed them, recreated, slapped them, and threatened to burn their mother but to no avail. Hopefully anyone around here has a more succesful solution. Thank-you in advance.

 

[sygnus21]

I'm having somewhat of a hard time understanding your post. However, do the partitions have drive letters assigned to them?

Right click "Computer"
click "Manage"
click "Disk Management" and check that the second disk shows up and that a drive letter is assigned to each partition, if not...
right click the partition and assign a drive letter.
Exit out of everything and re-boot if neccessary.

Good luck

 

[Jonathan_King]

Hello Jeetje, Welcome!

This article applies to XP, not 7, but it may still be valid. Drive Letters Assigned In Disk Administrator Disappear On Restart

 

[Tepid]

BTW,, is 7,,,, if the drive is empty, the drive may not populate Explorer.

New Setting in Windows 7

Computer / Alt / Tools / File Options
Look for Hide Empty Drives in explorer or something like that.

 

[sygnus21]

BTW,, is 7,,,, if the drive is empty, the drive may not populate Explorer.

I'm not sure what you mean, by "empty" and "populate", but if the drive is formatted, even if it has no data on it, it will show up in explorer. It won't show if it doesn't have a drive letter assigned.

and yes I know what populate means, I just don't get what you're saying.

 

[Jeetje]

Thanks for the welcome and the feedback thus far. Much appreciated

I have (repeatedly) tried to assign Drive Letters to the partitions by the way of Disk Manager/Adminstrator.
They 'stick', but disappear after reboot.

Tried doing the same with Partition Wizzard, but again: Drive Letters disappear after reboot.
Will try with Paragon later on when I get home.

Tried to follow the Drive Letters Assigned In Disk Administrator Disappear On Restart instructions, but had some trouble locating them in Win7. Will take another look at them later.

 

[Jonathan_King]

Let us know what happens. A poster above reminded me of a setting. Is there anything on these partitions?

 

[Jeetje]

I tried both ways. At first I only named the partitions and rebooted without any files on them. Based on the earlier reply I decided to throw some files onto them before rebooting. Didn't make a difference.

Also ran formats. Quick, slow, you name it. No avail.

 

[sygnus21]

So the problem is that the drive letters don't stick after reboot. Hmmm...

Does the entire drive disapear after reboot as well? If so, I'd check the cables to the HD. Also, are the motherboard's drivers installed. And what are the IDE channels set to - IDE, AHCI, SATA, check those as well as BIOS settings.

I'd also have a look at the hard drive, as well as the jumper settings. Also, if possible, can you try another drive to see if you have the same issue? Could be a bad HD.

And it would be nice to have your system specs listed!!!

PS - here's a good article on missing drive letters - Take the mystery out of the missing drive

Here's a quote from the article

An important clue that you’re dealing with a hardware problem is that all the drive letters associated with a particular physical disk are missing. This is because most hardware problems will cause the entire disk not to be recognized by the BIOS, so the operating system is completely unaware that the disk is there.

Again, check the HD.

 

[Tepid]

Out of curiosity,, have you tried changing the drive letters to something different?
Or are you using the same letters every time?

Sometimes this happens with USB drives, they assign an already used drive letter and then don't populate.
Could be something similar here... but.....

I am starting to wonder if this is not hardware related also,, and either....

A. There is a problem with the drives

B. Problem with the ports on the motherboard

c. Problem with the BIOS

D. something weird

or

The OS could, maybe be corrupted in some way. Nuke and Reload is all I could offer on that.

 

[whi30]

Partitions gone after reboot

I have what looks like the same issue of Drive letter dissappears on reboot, my partition D.

I have 2 hard drives and have had for some time now, One Windows 7 64 Pro and the other Vista 64. The other night I installed media manager for my blackberry and upon reboot I lost my drive letter for D.

I also noticed the partition type had changed from NTFS to Compaq?
I cannot assign a letter to it, but I can delete and recreate it and it assigns itself driver letter D.. all is well until I reboot, dissappears again, I have tried everything that others in this post have tried.
One success is that when I boot to my second drive (Vista) I can recover the drive letter .. sticks after reboot to Vista but when I boot into Windows 7 .. gone!
The recovery is accomplished by changing the partition type back to NTFS

 

[natepiet]

jeetje what did you do to get this working?

I have exactly the same issue and it's driving me crazy.

thanks.

 

[whs]

Apparently something happens at boot time. I would look in a slightly different corner.

1. Check whether there is any scheduled task at boot time that could do that (use the schtasks command in cmd)
2. I would disable ALL startup programs and see whether the same thing happens. If things work out well, you can troubleshoot those buggers one by one.

 

[steve-pressman]

Are these Hard drives Sata Drives or USB drives?


Steve