Why should you always install in Disk0

[whs]

We all know that the installation on Disk0 is important if you do not want to end up with your 100MB partition there and your system on another drive.

Mike Harvey, MVP summarizes in this article the rationale. The article may be handy for reference since the question comes up occasionally.

Why You Should Always Install Windows on Disk Zero

 

[essenbe]

Good read WHS. I guess that is more justification to disconnect all HDD except the one you are installing 7 on.

 

[theog]

Yes, a good read.

 

[mickey megabyte]

thanks for the site, wolfgang - there's a lot of useful free software featured there too!

 

[whs]

thanks for the site, wolfgang - there's a lot of useful free software featured there too!

Yes right - 177 pages worth. A real treasure chest.

 

[gregrocker]

When running repair if Win7 HD is not DISK0 then any preceding drive which is marked Active will also take the System boot files.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

I reset the CMOS, set the 500GB as first boot device (SATA 1) booted to diskpart and created and marked Active a 40GB Primary to do the clean install.

Removed all the drive letters from the 640GB before I started the installation process and set it as second boot device.

Started the install and as you can see set-up saw my created 40GB "System" partition as Disk 0 and the 640GB as Disk 1.



Paragon HDM 2010 sees it as Disk 0 after the install was complete, when I created an image.

​

Now this is how Windows 7 disk management sees these, the 640GB as Disk 0 and the 500GB as Disk 1, just disregard disk 2 as I added that back after the install was complete.

​

 

[mjf]

Relationship between disk drive number & SATA channel

This may be of interest
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]

This may be of interest
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

Thanks mate, that just says MS is aware of the issue and doesn't offer a solution.

I just checked diskpart again and it still reads them the same way.


Thank you very much for your time though.

 

[mjf]

Thanks mate, that just says MS is aware of the issue and doesn't offer a solution.

True.
I thought it might save some bashing of heads against brick walls.

 

[gregrocker]

The risk to data loss is minimal since a data partition should be predefined and identifiable by volume size and label (if any), another good reason to label partitions.