TI Home 2010, Drive letters not assigned correctly on a disk/partition recovery
I am currently trying out the new TI Home 2010 program. The problem I am having is that the drive letters are changing after I do a disk/image recovery.
Current configuration:
E8400 uP
GA-EP45-UD3P MB
8GB RAM
2X 1.5 TB Seagate hard drives (SATA2)
3X USB WD 500 GB backup drives
Op System: Windows 7 64bit.
The first 1.5 TB Seagate is partitioned as follows:
Drive letter/partition name/partition size
C:/ Op Sys 25GB
D:/ Apps 25 GB
E:/ Page File 1 3GB
The rest of the drive is unallocated
The second 1.5 TB Seagate hard drive is partitioned as follows:
Drive letter/partition name/partition size
F:/ Page File 2 3GB
G:/ Program Storage 25GB
H:/ Media Storage 1.34TB
** added **: Each backup is manual to the USB drives. In addition, each backup is full and the validation box is checked. I have had no problems with the backup process.
I only backup the first drive. I make 3 identical backups using the external USB drives.
When I recover the first drive using disk/partitioned recovery, it assigns the OP Sys partition correctly with the drive letter C. The other partitions, it appears, are assigned random drive letters that do not conflict with the second hard drive drive letter assignments. It does not matter which backup I use on the 3 external USB drives.
Is this normal or am I doing something wrong?
Best regards,
Chris Hulgan
Hi,
Thank you for the reply. I am not using the recovery disk, but the program directly from Windows. Regardless, it requires a reboot and I assume it boots into Linux for the recovery. I also assume Linux mounts the drives/partitions without letters. I again "assume" since I did a complete disk/image backup, with MBR, the system would reassign the same drive letters. This assumptions appears to be incorrect.
Please clarify what you mean by unique names for the partitions/drives. Each partition has a unique name as shown in the setup. Is this what you mean or is there another approach I am missing?
Chris
As you surmise it boots into Linux for recovery.
I didn't realise they were the names so you have a unique names :-)
If you haven't have a read of GroverH's how to recover file then its worth a read.
It is 7a in his sticky above
Chris:
I think what you're seeing is normal if this was the first time that you restored your disk with TrueImage. Your image file has drive letter assignments contained in the registry. When you restore the image and reboot, Windows will need to reassign drive letters. TI will force Windows to reassign C: to the operating system partition but it will let Windows handle the rest of the drive letter reassignments.
The rest of the explanation gets a little technical, but basically if the Windows 7 installer created your partitions originally then they were created with the newer Vista/Win 7 offset of 1 MB (2048 sectors). TI uses the older partitioning standard offset of 31.5 kB (63 sectors), so after the first restore each partition now is in a slightly different location. Since the identifier in the registry for each partition depends on the starting sector location, all of the stored drive letter reservations for the first disk are now invalidated. So when Windows reboots for the first time after restoration it won't find any letters reserved for the partitions that used to be called D: and E:, so it will assign new drive letters from the list of unreserved drive letters.
Just reassign whichever letters you prefer using Windows Disk Management.
This is a one-time event. If you now make a new image of the disk with your changes then the new image will restore without this issue.
Chris:
I have had TI 2009 (b 9709) do restores (from images) and had the outcome be perfect restored partitions, but with scrambled drive letters. For me, this was a rare happening but it could happen again.
To fix I booted a Bart CD and opened Win Disk Manager and reset the correct letters to the various partitions. It was easy because I carefully name each drive and/or partition with unique names. Without those names it would be harder.
I blamed the older motherboard and its bios for this happening. The mobo badly wanted IDE drives however it also had a trick way to use SATA drives, which I was using. My C: drive ended up being E:
Please post if you are sure you have found a reason this happens.
Fungus
Sorry Chris
I may have misread your question
I didn't realise that the recovered partitions drives had new letters assigned when Windows was restarted on the recovered partitions.
I thought you were talking about in the recovery process.
Mark seems to have the explanation
For ? :-)
Thanks everyone for your inputs. Just a few more clarifications. When I switched over to Windows 7 64 bit, I used gParted to setup the partitions before the install. This was to avoid any offsets and the 100MB Bitlocker file created by the Win 7 making its own partition. The mother board is a GA-EP45-UD3P and I am only using the Intel SATA ports in RAID status, but no array created. The letter reassigning is an every-time event. I have recovered several times during the "getting it right" stage and each time the drive letters are reassigned. I also use it to rewind when I put a piece of software that I do not like on the computer. I would estimate I have recovered at least 20X and I am about to do it again. I loaded Gigabyte's DES software and I don't like how it operates. I could uninstall the software, but I prefer to rewind the software to a state before the addition of DES. I do use the Disk Manager to correct the situation, but it does mess with the registry and all program pointers are not updated. I have also tried different disk, WD Raptor, WD 650MB and finally I used the Seagate. Short stroking the Seagate causes it to perform better than the Raptor.
Chris:
Just to clarify, are all of the following true?
1. You used gParted to partition the first 1.5 TB Seagate disk, so all partitions on this disk have 63-sector offset.
2. When you restore this disk you restore all three partitions simultaneously (C, D, and E)
3. After restoration the partitions for Apps and Pagefile 1 are not reassigned drive letters D: and E:
4. After fixing the drive letters you make a new image
5. When you restore this new image the drive letters for Apps and Pagefile 1 are still not reassigned to D: and E:
Do I understand this correctly?
If you're not restoring the Disk Signature and TI changes it, that will cause letter reassignments.
True, but if you're restoring back to the same disk then there is no reason for TI to change the Disk Signature. If it does then something is wrong.
If you'd like to troubleshoot this further then it would help us if we could see the contents of the registry key HKEY_Local_Machine\System\MountedDevices for the C:, D:, and E: partitions both before and after a restoration, like the following (I know; I'm showing different drive letters):
It would also be helpful to see the partition table before and after a restoration. The easiest way to do this if you don't have a partitioning program is to download Symantec's partition table editor PTEdit32 and make a screen shot like this one:
Mark, et al
All items are correct except #4. I backup every other day to the three USB drives and I keep it four deep. It is not an immediate backup. I just finished a recovery and it did the same thing, correctable with Disk Manager. I will try to post the information you requested in the next several days. I will be leaving the country on business and I am not sure of the return date or what access will be available where I will be. I work for the Defense department and security is high. Thanks for your help!!!
FYI: only the first approximately 50GB of the first 1.5TB drive are used. The rest is unallocated. Short stroking the drive.
Chris
Chris:
If you're not doing item 4 (making a new image post-correction of the drive letters) then that's probably the issue. Try that first.