Missing Partition letter

Hi All,

Running win 7 64 bit on my new computer which came with 2TB HDD

I want to split the HD into two partitions and have done so using (win 7) Disk Management reducing the boot partition to (1 TB) and formatting the rest of the disk into a new partition with a new drive called E:

But when I reboot, the E: drive is missing. In Disk Management the new partition is there and labeled "healthy" but the drive letter is gone and I can't access the drive... the only choice available is "Delete Volume" . I have already reformatted etc to revive the drive letter but rebooting deletes it again.

Am I doing something wrong? Thanks in advance.

 

I had to think about your situation, as it is so straightforward , normally.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2674-partition-volume-create-new.html

1/ Did you let windows choose the drive letter for your new partition ?- If you changed it, that can, I have found cause a problem- Windows knows best.
Read through the link, and check thatyou followed it in the disc mangement console.

 

Thanks baklogic for your reply. Yes I did let windows select the drive letter. I didn't do anything fancy outside the basics. Wonder if I didn't do enough.

 

What options do you get listed when you right click on the new volume ?
What options do you get listed when you click on the action button above for the new volume ?

 

In both cases I only get "Delete Volume". Right click I also get "Help"

 

More info:

When I do go to delete the partition, it warns that the partition wasn't created by windows and may be read by other OSs are you sure? etc

It definitely WAS created by windows as a NTFS partition...and, as mentioned, functioned perfectly until reboot.

Looking more closely there is a third v. small partition which also seems to have the same unreadable/no drive letter properties. I think this is a recovery partition, on booting I have the option to go into some recovery mode BEFORE win 7 loads but note that this function isn't found, so guessing this smaller partition isn't being read even before win 7 tries it.

 

Did you create that partition as a Primary or Extended partition?

Note that an Extended partition is not actually a usable partition, but a container that can hold one or more logical partitions (or drives).

Can you post a screenshot how your Disk Management panel looks?

 

dinsdale....
When you look in computer to see drives/partitions....
Your C:/ DRIVE is windows &
If you have a recovery partition, this will often be D, and is often hidden.
This is sometimes at the beginning, but could well be on the end of the hard drive, and possibly the problem
What dvd drive have you- one or two- these will show as E..OR.. F (IF TWO)
Look to see if any other partition has a drive letter......
Thinking about it, it may not be the correct drive letter allocated (although I have never come across that) If you recreated the simple volume in NFTS, and allocate a higher drive letter- say G
If that dies not sort it out
Try again- this way, with partition wizard

http://www.majorgeeks.com/MiniTool_Partition_Wizard_Home_Edition_d6175.html

This is an excellent tool, and you can use it to ensure that new partition becomes usable, as you can see the partitions in front of you when you do the work, and the new partition mshould be easier to work on.
When you look at the partitions, you will see the two 1 TB partitions, and as long as you do not choose the boot drive (usually C) the other one (1TB )can be set up there

 

Here's another good partition manager: EASEUS Partition Master Home Edition

 

Primary

Please find screen shot attached. This is BEFORE a restart, have formatted and used the new drive E:...after reboot it shows the volme as being healthy but the drive letter is missing etc.
Thanks for your interest.

 

Please find attached a screen shot of My Computer as it displays drives and their letters BEFORE a reboot after which E: will disappear.

Happy to try other partitioners BUT worry that there is something fundamentally wrong with my system as I should be able to perform this simple operation (I have done it before) with reliability...sure don't want to put stuff into a drive to find I can't access it.

As ever, many thanks for your interest and applying your brain power to my problem.

 

I would diconnect the backup hard drive, when creating a new partition--(Incidently, The 2tb backup usb drive is 'overfull'- best to leave a few of gibabytes free, for free read/write abilities.)
I see you have card readers/slots -5 ???

2TB HARD DRIVE shows 1850gb total, which is the difference in manufacturers real, and actual size --difference in (decimal for the manufacturer, binary for the computer's OS),
So I would say you do not have a recovery opartition (Partition Wizard would show it, if you did, anyway)
I did , also, have a look around and this problem iis not unique to yourself.

 

I t can be worth running CHKDSK /R from a command prompt on the new partition , as if the files are corrupted, it could sort them out.- Sometimes it happens.
Partition Wizard is really good, I have used it often (the free version is ideal for a home user)
I have never had to use another- EASEUS is often used by other geeks, though.
Seagate tool is good for lots of things, but usually needs a seagate hard drive.
Partition Wizard has proved itself to me.

 

Thanks for your comments about the 2tb drive. Will disconnect. But did use Mini tool reveal 2 hidden partitions. The recovery one (FAT32)and the new one (NTFS) I am trying to get to stay as E:. WHile giving me a better tool, it seems to make no real difference because when I rebooted they both returned to being hidden. A couple of times the E: drive even returned to hidden moments after I had Mini Tool "apply" the changes.

Something bigger seems to be going on!

Thanks for sticking with me so far.

 

Perhaps you could try deleting the troublesome partition using Minitools and Apply the changes. Reboot and use Minitools to create a new NTFS partition in the unallocated space and assign a drive letter and Apply changes. Reboot and see if the changes stick.

If they don't stick, then right-click the partition in Minitools and select Properties. On the Partition Info tab the partition type ID should be 0x07 for a visible NTFS partition or 0x17 for a hidden NTFS partition. Has the partition type been changed to 0x17?

 

By all means try this...

If it still fails, I can only see using diskpart as an answer, in command prompt.
Try the command line option
(START, TYPE IN CMD IN THE SEARCH, AND THEN CLICK ON COMMAND
A BLACK BOX COMES UP
type in diskpart
press enter
In the new box type in
list disk
Press enter
Next type in
list volume
You should now see both 'hidden' partitions
Next type in
select - VOLUME X (CHANGE X to the largest hidden partition) this will be volume 2, or, 3, or , 4,
depending where it is on your hard drive.
When diskpart comes up again, type in
assign
Next type in
exit

 

Changes didn't stick.

The type displayed as 0x0C FAT32 LBA I changed it to 0x07 NTFS...it worked but rebooted and it had changed to 0x1C Hidden FAT32 LBA. It was NEVER formatted as FAT32!

 

Will try this tomorrow. Cheers.

 

If the cmd prompt does not work.........
Use Partition Wizard to undo all that you have done-take care to delete the new partition, and apply changes.
What I believe we have to do is look at the obvious- my favourite saying is 'often the obvious eludes us'
We need to get back to original. As it is now, it is showing the recovery partition at the end of the drive, and this can make life difficult, as it can interupt any change to partitions previous to it, and may well be our problem.
Before you do anything, if you don't have recovery discs, it would be sensible sensible to create a set of recovery discs and back up all important data.
If you delete that new inaccessable partition, using partition wizard, you should be able to get to your recovery on starting, to check that it is functionable.Hopefully trying to add that new partition has not totally disabled it.
If you have no backups, nor recovery discs, I hope you have A WINDOWS DISC, AND OFFICE (IF YOU HAVE THEM)., and the coa's then that's good.
What appears to happening is that windows is refusing to accept another basic /primary partition'
I saw on my hard drive, that my extra partitions are set as logical, (as I use HyperOs, and it does it all for me, just a few clicks )
Once you have got back to original,using Partition wizard, right click on the C partition, and choose modify. Scroll down and see if 'set partition to logical shows up---if it does ---set to set partition to logical. Click apply.
If you are not given the choice of logical, the next bit will be irrelevent.
If you can get that far, then shrink the new logical C partition, and then clcick apply, then the unallocated space that shows up needs to have the partition created -go to top of partition wizard, and click on create, and carry on from there- click apply after each action. If I remember correctly, you need to restart for it all to be invoked.
If I had a spare hard drive, I would try it all, before putting this up for you, but I have not, at the moment.

 

If you can get to creating that partition, choose logical

 

Tried as you suggested but no other partition was listed (hidden or other wise)

 

You're on to something here. Indeed I was able to access the recovery function at boot once I followed your instructions.

I have back ups and WIN7 recovery DVDs BUT this makes me very nervous since it's still a lot of work/time to rebuild my system if I have to do a clean install. Before I do this can you reassure me that the OS doesn't have to be on a primary partition?

Another tack coming off what you have suggested: Would it be helpful if my recovery partition was moved to the front of the drive? Can I do that?

Thanks so much for your persistence!

 

Unless you are using a non-standard boot manager such as Grub, which you are not, then your C drive HAS to be primary, not logical. You can have a maximum of four primary partitions, but if you create a logical partition it will use one of the four. However in your case you only have your original C drive and your recovery partition so in theory there should be no issues in creating a third primary partition. It does sound as if your partition table in track 0 is in a mess. I'll give it some more thought but would advise against creating any logical partitions at all until this is sorted.

 

I suspect, as has been suggested, that the hidden recovery partition at the end of the drive is the cause of this problem. It would ceratinly be possible to move it forward using Minitool but I have no idea whether it would still work afterwards. Personally I would simply dump it and use an imaging program to give me far more useful disaster recovery options. If you wanted to go down that road it would be prudent to revert the sytem to its original partition structure, by removing the new partition and expanding C, and then creating an image of the entire drive. You would need at least 320GB on an external to hold the image but a second 1TB would be a better investment in your case.

There are probably other ways to resolve this, but that is what I always do with a new comp.

 

Hi Earthling,

thanks for your input.

So by "dumping" the recovery partition you mean "completely delete"? I'm OK with this since all it provides is a way to return to the new install and overwrites all my files... I can do this with a clean install from disk BUT what will the boot manager make of this when I reboot?

 

Whichever way you delete the recovery partition - with Minitool, Disk Management or Diskpart - the partition table will be adjusted to recognise the change and the system will boot normally. Once that is done I'm pretty sure you will be able to make the change you want and it will stick.

Personally though I would never make such fundamental changes to a disk without imaging it first. Of course an imaging program will give you ongoing benefits and if used regularly there should never be any need to consider an OS reinstall.

Must say I prefer Acronis to the others, but Easeus Todo is very capable too.

 

I have dealt with HyperOs for some years, and Earthling has suggested removing the recovery partition- if you are happy with that then you can incorporate the small partition into C (expand C......) easiest of all.
Once you have done that you will be able to strink your drive to as many partitions as you want - as Earthing said, max 4 primary partitions- but who needs 4 primary partitions ?
One primary partition is I need,- in my case that is all I have - the rest are logical partitions, and all are bootable systems (XP<VISTA>W7>W8developers)
If you were to delete the any partition before the last partition, you will get trouble. If you delete another paartition after the C drive, (say you had a D partition, before deleting the last partition you would get problems, not unlike what you were having.
As long as you keep the C partition as is, then extend it to the full size of the hard drive, you can then partition as you wish, as Earthling said.
I have no problems booting from logical partitions, - getting rid of the recovery partition is the answer. I would use Partition wizard to copy the recovery partiton to another hard drive.
Like I said in the previous post- save important data, and any serial numbers, in case things go wrong.
Partition Wizard does also make it possible to undelete partitions , if things go wrong, but needs to be done carefully.I have used it to undelete several formats,and actually got back to the original factory set up on a Toshiba laptop.
Good luck

 

That is simply because you are using HyperOs. It isn't possible with a standard MBR.

 

Yes, I missed the boat a bit - it needs at least a small primary partition with boot info, (boot.ini , ntdetect.com, ntldr) Trouble is that would have got more complicated, too. It is basically that recovery partition I reckon, being at the end of the drive, that has caused his problem.
but I had forgotten that,as HyperOs made me lazy:banghead
Good interuption Earthling

 

Thanks all,

Will go ahead and delete my recovery partition but copy it to another drive before I do. Thanks again for your help and persistence.

 

Do let us know how this goes please :wave

 

Before I did the complete deletion of the recovery partition I tried an experiment.

1) Leaving C:\ partition the size of only half the drive (2TB) I moved the recovery partition forward on the drive to butt up against the end of C:\.

2) rebooted and was still able to access the recovery partition before windows booted.

3) created a new partition in the unallocated space now AFTER the recovery partition.

4) Rebooted and it STUCK!

Have rebooted a couple of times and the new partition remains! Problem appears to be solved. Will give it a week or so before I trust it but looks good!

Many thanks Baklogic and Earthling for providing me with the ideas and tools to get this far!

 

Thanks for the feedback! Synergy in action :major

 

I have tried loads of things, but not moving a partition- well done dinsdale.
It would seem that any one else who can see that they have a recovery partition at the end of their hard drive can now see a way to add partitions- As you found
Even though it will not assign a drive letter permanently- Create that partition , then use a tool like partition wizard to move the recovery partition forward to the end of the remaining C partition, then create a new partition in the remaining unallocated partition.
Too simple...... Just keep us posted to let us know that the recovery partition is still usable, and it carries on booting O.K.