Windows 7 drive list order automatically changed

V

Value Buyer

Disciple
I am using dual boot of windows xp and 7.I have 7 partitions in first hdd (500GB) and 4 partitions in second hdd (1TB).I was partitioned first hard disk like c,d,e,f and dvd drive named as g by windows xp os after some time I was in need to increase number of partition and I created three more partition and later installed windows7 in E drive of first HDD instead of D drive.Now the order of hard disk partition is suffled in some unwanted manner.

After some time I purchased second HDD I carefully decided to allocate the space by keep future need in mind.At that time I had 4 partitions in second hdd (c,d,e,f).My second HDD have 32 mb cache so I decided to check os performance and installed windows 7 on that drive now the again the second hard disk drive letters suffled in the order c,e,f,d I donot know why it is happening like that.How to arrange the partitions in our desired order.I have the following partition order.

hddparionjpg.jpg


I want the os display in this order when booting in windows 7 of first hard disk(First HDD : e,c,d,f,g,h,i and j (DVd drive),Second HDD : c,d,e,f)
 
TBH i can't understand your query completely. Still assuming your problem, i will suggest you to use meaning drive name like
"movies"- drive containing movies
"music" - music drive
"misc"- misc items
...and so on

Now windows 7 will list the drives alphabetically.

I hope i am clear
 
Each drive has a unique drive letter. Two drive letters cannot be same.

If you want to change drive letters, right-click Computer icon & select manage. Open Disk management. Right click each disk & select "Change drive letter 7 paths".
 
CA50 said:
TBH i can't understand your query completely. Still assuming your problem, i will suggest you to use meaning drive name like

"movies"- drive containing movies

"music" - music drive

"misc"- misc items

...and so on

Now windows 7 will list the drives alphabetically.

I hope i am clear
Click to expand...
Ok by putting in simple term for example I partitioned second HDD from windows 7 of first HDD and name it as c,d,e,f and it was displayed in the same order but after I installed windows 7 in second HDD (c drive) the os displays the drives like this order c,e,f,d

:huh:
 
The drive you install Windows in automatically becomes C drive.

The first partition on the other drive will usually become D drive.

The next partition(s) on the first drive will then assume the letters after D.

The next partitions in the next drive will then pick up the sequence.

If you boot from two hard drives, the letters change as per the drive from which you boot.
 
^^I second this, i had a very old system with 2 HDDs (20GB and 80GB) and had two HDDs in that. It was done the same way. Primary OS drive was C: and then first parition from the 2nd drive as D: and again E: for 2nd partition from 1st drive and so on.
 
I don't know whether I could not explain my problem properly or something else.Ok leave it all my previous post I am putting my query as simple as possible.Consider first four partition only ( which belongs to one hard disk),I partitioned hard disk into four drives c (100GB),d(50GB),e(750GB),f(31.4GB) but after installing windows 7 it rearrange hard disk partition in the following order.c (100GB),e(750GB),f(31.4GB),d(50GB).Is there any reason for this strange behavior of windows 7 actually it is treating internally e as d,f as e,d as f :S.

harddisk.jpg


http://imageshack.us/f/17/harddisk.jpg/
 
cranky said:
How exactly did you partition the drives and exactly when did you specify the drive letters?
Click to expand...
I partitioned exactly what I told In my previous post (c (100GB),d(50GB),e(750GB),f(31.4GB)) and named the drives while partitioning it.One more additional information I am giving which may not be the reason for this problem,I have formatted f(31.4 GB) as fat32 all other NTFS format.
 
Not sure why it happened but like pauldmps said, go to disk management and change the drive paths to the one you want
 
My question is - what program did you use, and at what point in the program did you specify the drive letter? If the label and the letter are not matching it's probably because the active installation determines the drive letter order, as the drive letter is not 'hardcoded' in the drive. Windows always assigns itself 'C', and then works out the rest of the partitions depending on the starting cylinder.

Was it from within the W7 program on the other disk? Or a third-party utility? If so, which one?

In any case reallocating drive letters will take all of 5 minutes. Probably better to do that anyway.

FWIW, it's not wise to have so many partitions on one disk. It increases seek time within the partitions and reduces drive life. It may be fine to use a separate partition for Windows so you don't nuke everything if Windows takes a dump, but that apart a single large partition is the quickest way for a drive to work.
 
bottle said:
Not sure why it happened but like pauldmps said, go to disk management and change the drive paths to the one you want
Click to expand...

I could not do it either I want to name and list in this order c,d,e,f but there is no option to change the drive name to some other existing driver name.When I boot in first HDD windows xp,xp is ordering partitions exactly in the order I partitioned hard disk .

parion.jpg


Imageshack - parion.jpg
 
You cannot rename it because the letters are already in use. First rename them all to X,Y,Z and free up the letters D,E,F etc and then rename the drives as you wish
 
bottle said:
You cannot rename it because the letters are already in use. First rename them all to X,Y,Z and free up the letters D,E,F etc and then rename the drives as you wish
Click to expand...

Are you sure it is safe to do that because I have stored all my date in my second HDD (1TB) to format first HDD (500GB) to make it clean install everything if anything goes wrong then it will be a huge setback to me.

--- Updated Post - Automerged ---
cranky said:
My question is - what program did you use, and at what point in the program did you specify the drive letter? If the label and the letter are not matching it's probably because the active installation determines the drive letter order, as the drive letter is not 'hardcoded' in the drive. Windows always assigns itself 'C', and then works out the rest of the partitions depending on the starting cylinder.

Was it from within the W7 program on the other disk? Or a third-party utility? If so, which one?

In any case reallocating drive letters will take all of 5 minutes. Probably better to do that anyway.

FWIW, it's not wise to have so many partitions on one disk. It increases seek time within the partitions and reduces drive life. It may be fine to use a separate partition for Windows so you don't nuke everything if Windows takes a dump, but that apart a single large partition is the quickest way for a drive to work.
Click to expand...
I understand that first I was using windows xp several years, last year end I decided to try windows 7 and installed in drive E because I don't have enough space in other drives and I could allocate only 15 GB drive at that time.
Later I purchased another HDD to store my rapidly growing video files.I could not remember exactly in what way I partitioned my second HDD it but I have used three ways to partitioned my HDD at different times using OS installation,partition magic 8.05,Acronis*Disk Director Server 10.0.2169.

Finally I have decided to format 500gb HDD and partition into 4 drives (c (100GB),d(30GB),e(20GB),f(315+GB)) c drive meant for primary drive for windows 7 day to day usage,gaming,media playing,d drive for another os (xp or linux or chrome),e drive fat32 partition,f drive for storing part of media files and downloaded content and second HDD 1TB to serve for backup purpose.Is there any other better way to do this task.
 
1. There is no benefit in having a FAT32 partition. Most utilities can read NTFS natively.

2. Ditto for the tiny 30GB partition. Chrome or Linux will never install on a named NTFS partition, you will have to wipe it and reformat it to ext3 or hpfs. Which means it is pointless to have it anyway.

3. If you need two OSs plus storage, that is how you need to partition it, and leave one partition unformatted and unallocated so you don't have to do it again later. 40-50GB is good - 30 is way to little for anything except a basic XP install with minimal programs.

4. You haven't understood the issue. Let's try and explain it.

You have one W7 install and you use it to partition another disk. So let's say you have four drive letters. C, D, E and F. You can't actually use 'C' while partitioning as the install you are currently using (let's call it install X) already occupies C. So far so good?

Now you install W7 on this disk that you have just created. Let us call this install Y. Now when you reboot, install Y has no clue of what you have called the partitions as it is seeing them fresh. It calls its own partition 'C', and then tries to allocate drive letters depending on when it comes across each partition. You will have to rename them. Now you can't have two partitions of the same name, so you have to rename one of them to 'M' (or similar) and then juggle all the names to get where you want.

However if you boot using install X, it knows what it did and recognises the drive letters correctly.

The same is true whether you use third party or the Windows utility. You can rename letters any time you want and your data is no more under danger than it always is. Which means if something had to go wrong, it wouldn't be because you were using a different letter. I have to do this every time I change the southbridge driver, and it's no issue.
 
Value Buyer said:
Are you sure it is safe to do that because I have stored all my date in my second HDD (1TB) to format first HDD (500GB) to make it clean install everything if anything goes wrong then it will be a huge setback to me.
Click to expand...

Unless it is your system driver or you are having swap file in that partition or any other program installed in those partitions, changing drive letter won't cause you problem.
 
fuzzy_child said:
Unless it is your system driver or you are having swap file in that partition or any other program installed in those partitions, changing drive letter won't cause you problem.
Click to expand...
Yes normally if that is the case changing drive letters won't have any drastic affect.
 
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