Incorrect partition letter assignments after BCD repair

milehiguy,

If you are referring to the drive letter assignments when booted from the TI RecoveryCD, then what you see is normal for any version of TrueImgage where multiple partitions exist.

As to the why, the drive letters inside Windows are assigned by Windows, whereas, the drive letters assigned on the CD are assiged by Linux which is the software used on the CD.

Don't match to drive letters. Match to partition names, partition sizes, etc. If your partitons have no names, assign names to them.

This link will help explain and provide examples.

Both item 1 and 2 inside this link provide examples.  

https://forum.acronis.com/forum/29618

The drive lettering you see when booted via the CD is normal display for Acronis Linux CD. 

It is not something you can change. Assign partition names, if needed, to eliminate any confusion.

I include the WINDOWS drive letter in my assignment to assist in the partition name matching

Win7Pro_C

so if Win7Pro_C shows when booted in the CD as letter Win7Pro_C(D)  I know its is the same partition backup as the Win7Pro_C.

Thanks Grover for the reply and the How to links.  ;)

Yup, am referring to the partition letter assignments when booted from my ATI 2013 Plus Pack rescue media CD-ROM.  It appears that these same letters are assigned when examining (or mounting) the .tib file from within Windows.  However, after repairing my \Boot\BCD last month I'm seeing different letter assignments, even in the Linux environment, than before the repair, which is what puzzles me.  I'll try to attach 3 screen grabs, if you would be so kind as to look at them.

ATI 2013 tib file - partitions (b4 BCD repair) -- .tib enumeration from a (all partitions) backup done before "BCD problem"
ATI 2013 tib file - partitions (aft BCD repair) -- .tib enumeration from a (sys&data only) backup done after BCD repair
ATI 2013 rescue disc - partitions (aft BCD repair) -- letter assignments as assigned by Linux after BCD repair

Comparing the first two pictures, and the DATA partition specifically (4th partition on SATA drive), you can see that it USED to be assigned drive letter H:, which ironically or otherwise, matched the Windows assignment H:.  In fact, all 10 drive letter assignments within the .tib AND as assigned by Windows, have been identical for 3+ years.  That is, until last month after I "repaired" my BOOTMGR files/location.

Regarding picture 3 (while running rescue media), I still wonder about the Dell pre-installed FAT16 (DellUtility) and RECOVERY partitions, assigned letters D: and E: by Linux apparently.  I could be mistaken, but I simply don't remember, at this level from within the boot disc, these two special Dell partitions previously being assigned a drive letter at all.  Thus, my theory re: all subsequent partitions now being bumped by two letter assignments, i.e. my DATA partition being assigned J: now instead of H:, as it has been for the last few years with every backup I've made.

Anyway, your thoughts?

If the new letter assignment insdie Windows is not the same as the old letter assignment was, I would think the drive letters could be removed and added back using the  Windows Disk Management console.  That may or may not affect the BCD instructions.

Post your questions with MVP Mark Wharton at this link.  He is a whiz with BCD corrections or interpretations.  He may be able to help. This is outside my helping.

http://forum.acronis.com/forum/6758?page=16#comment-323337

You could include your posting lnk above which is

http://forum.acronis.com/forum/111076#comment-324188

Thanks Grover, just contacted Mark.  Thanks again for your time.  ;)

milehiguy:

Could you attach a screenshot from Windows Disk Management showing the layout of your disks? When you do, make the window wide enough so that all of the colums show all of the available text, like this picture below:

Here you go Mark, let me know if you need anything else. ;)  p.s. even though there's an "XP" prefix on 3 of the volume names (E:, F:, G:), I only have Windows 7 installed on this computer (i.e. no multi-boot, although that was the orig idea behind the extra partitions on the SATA drive).

Aha!  Mark, I just stumbled upon an OLD photo I took of the volume letters as assigned by Linux (ATI rescue disc) before I was forced to repair the BCD.  As you can see in the new att. below from several months ago, the two special Dell partitions were assigned K: and L: (and prob have been for years), versus D: and E: as they are now.  Question is, how do I get these two partitions mapped, at this low level, back to K: and L: where they were before?  If I could accomplish this, then perhaps the volume letters assigned by ATI, and as the .tib is created, will be back to where they're supposed to be (C-J).  Does that make sense?

I'm glad that you found the old photo because it explains a lot. Your system used to boot from the second partition on the SSD (the Recovery partition) and now it boots from the third partition (W7-SSD-SYS). That's probably why the drive letters are being assigned differently. You can see by comparing the old photo with the new photo in reply #2, third attachment, that the Recovery partition used to have the "Active" flag set and now the W7 partition has the "Active" flag set.

There are two approaches here:

1. You can live with things the way they are.

A few words about drive letters are in order. They are totally arbitrary and are assigned by different operating systems differently. Basically, they are meaningless. Windows has a pre-defined algorithm for assigning drive letters but lets the user change them at will. Linux doesn't use drive letters but rather identifies partitions by their location on the disk, which makes more sense. ATI's Linux-based recovery environment has its own rules known only to Acronis. I don't know what they are, but maybe somebody else on here does.

Like Grover said in his reply, using a name for a partition identifier is unambiguous since drive letters are arbitrary; not absolute.

2. We can have a look at your BCDs (both the one on the Recovery partition and the one on the W7 partition) to see what it will take to get the system to boot from the Recovery partition like it used to. Once done, the drive letter assignments will probably return to what they were before.

The culprit here is that the ATI recovery environment probably takes into account the active flag on a disk when determining what letter to call a particular partition, and since you changed which partition is active, the algorithm produces different letter assignments.

milehIguy,

I don't want to interfere here but a queston.

Curious. Do you have a disk image backup that was created prior to the BCD repair?  If yes, it is possible to resort the partitions based on partition number/placement  and have TI show us the physical position of the partitions irrespective of whatever letters were assigned. This could be done by visual examination of the backup. More details depending upon your answer.

Mark, interesting insight there.  Indeed, prior to the BCD problem, I'd never noticed a \Boot folder on the C:[W7-SSD-SYS] partition.  After the BCD repair process (using Windows 7 Pro DVD from Dell), the folder and file (\Boot\BCD) ended up on E:[XP-HDD-P1] of all places.  I didn't even notice this right away, as it's Hidden, until I examined (in Windows Explorer) the first new .tib backup.  This is when I downloaded EasyBCD and changed the boot partition (and thus, the BCD file) to C: ... never realizing that for the past 3 years it's been on (and probably belongs hidden away on) the RECOVERY partition.  I'd prefer your option 2 above, if you're willing to provide some guidance.  Tomorrow, I'll connect one of my external drives and look for a True Image backup from prior to the BCD failure and repair, so that we can examine it, per Grover's request.  ;)

Grover, you're not interfering at all.  Quite the contrary, I greatly appreciate the input.  Tomorrow I'll look for full and partial .tib backups from prior to the BCD problem that we can mount and/or examine.  I should have several, certainly at least one or two that contain both Disks.  I suppose the full backups will be most valuable, esp. of the SSD disk, which is not only my system partition and where W7 is installed, but also includes an unmolested RECOVERY partition.  ;)

The tib backup file must be a disk image backup that includes all partitions.

Download pdf from this link.

http://forum.acronis.com/sites/default/files/mvp/user285/guides/tih2012…

Boot from the TI Recovery CD and perform a simulated restore via the intructions via pdf figures 1-9

Performing steps figure 7, 8 and 9 and will enable figure 9 on your computer to show the partition numbers and starting sectors numbers as they were at time the backup was created.
But you will need to perform all of step 1 thru step 9 to get to details in step 9.

At that point, your Recovery CD screen will show the details you were seeking and you can abort and cancel the simulated restore.

milehiguy:

In response to your reply #10, if you have a good backup of the recovery partition then option 2 might be painless. In principle, all you would need to do is restore the Recovery partition as a primary Active partition from a backup.

Before doing that we can look at the two BCDs to see if there are any potential issues. You can produce a text copy of the BCD file on the Windows 7 partition by entering the following command in an elevated command prompt window:

bcdedit /enum all > %userprofile%\Desktop\BCD1.txt

This will put the file BCD1.txt on your desktop. For the BCD on the backup of the recovery partition you would need to browse your backup and locate the BCD file, then enter the following command:

bcdedit /store Path to BCD /enum all > %userprofile%\Desktop\BCD2.txt

Substitute for the part in red the actual path to the file. For example, X:\Boot\BCD

Grover and Mark, I just connected one of my SEAGATE externals and luckily found a FULL image from 24OCT2015 that includes all partitions on both hard disks (SSD and SATA).  Windows Explorer of the (very large) .tib shows all 10 volumes C-L, including the RECOVERY partition (L:).  I believe it corresponds to the screen grab I posted in response #10.  Grover, I've not yet performed the procedure you described in your response #12.  First, I'll use Mark's bcdedit command-line string(s) to get the BCD info for \Boot\BCD on both the active one on the Windows 7 partition and the one from 10/24 on the RECOVERY partition of the .tib file.  Will post the results within the hour.  In the meantime, here are 2 new screen grabs showing the volume listing and \Boot folder (RECOVERY) contents from the 24oct2015 .tib file.  Again, thanks for the help!  - Rick Shafer, a.k.a. milehiguy  ;)

Mark, I've got the bcdedit info for the active BCD on the Windows 7 partition, but am hung up on the proper command-line string for the one tucked away within the .tib file on my external drive (S:).  The .tib file in question is located here:  S:\_IMAGES\RAS-P3400\RAS-P3400_24OCT2015_W7-FULL_ATI-2013_full_b1_s1_v1.tib ... what would the Path to BCD be in this case?  Ref. screen grabs in my previous reply.

Rick:

You are going to have to first extract the BCD file from the .tib archive. Use ATI to restore files, browse to the BCD file in the Recovery partition in the archive listed in your last reply, and restore the single BCD file to some location on your disk.

Very good, that's what I thought.  ;)  Attached are the two text files ...

Probably of little consequence, but note that in BCD1.txt there is a reference to "Windows 7 Professional (recovered)" beneath the Resume from Hibernate section.  In the Windows Boot Loader section, the description is simply "Windows 7 Professional".  This is probably because I remamed the O/S entry at some point to get rid of the suffix "(recovered)".

Rick:

Both of your BCDs look OK so their shouldn't be any issues in using either one.

So this should be easy. Since you have a good image of the Recovery partition, just use ATI to restore only this partition back to its current location on the SSD. When you do this, check the settings in ATI to be sure that it is restored as Primary, Active.

When done, your PC should then boot from the Recovery partition. With the Recovery partition active, ATI will probably interpret drive letters the same way it used to. If any drive letters change in Windows (they shouldn't) then just use Disk Management to switch them back.

Very good, thanks!  Will recover the 10/24 RECOVERY partition and let you guys know how it goes ... after the Broncos game of course!  ;)

Mark and Grover, am back again for more fun.  ;)  IF you have time to look at the following sequence of ten screen grabs, I'd appreciate it.  The first seven are of the recovery process (01-07).  The last three show the before-after-desired partition/volume assignments (00a-00b-00c).  Anyway, I fired up one of my 2TB Seagate external drives and recovered the RECOVERY partition from 10/24.  Recovery was successful, but I ended up with unexpected partition/volume assignments afterward, as illustrated in the after picture (00b).   Two things of note:  1) I elected to recover both Dell partitions (FAT16 DellUtility & RECOVERY), and 2) did NOT elect to recover "MBR and track 0" (should I have?).  I can easily re-do the recovery if necessary.  ;/  Anyway, my goal is still to get the partition/volume assignments (as shown by ATI 2013 rescue disc) back to where they've been for years and as illustrated in the desired picture (00c), namely FAT16=K: and RECOVERY=L:.  I suspect that you may want new bcdedit dumps, but will hold off unless instructed to do so.  Thanks in advance!

Rick:

It is not necessary to recover "MBR and Track 0".

I see something strange in your last two attachments. Let's number the attachments #1 - #10. In attachment #9 ATI is showing two disks numbered Disk 1 and Disk 2. In attachment #10 ATI shows two disks numbered Disk 2 and Disk 3. At that time did you have a Disk 1? In other words, did you used to have three disks in the PC and now you have two? Are the disks on the same motherboard ports now as they were when the 10/24 image was made?

Does the PC boot into Windows OK? Could you attach a screen shot of Disk Management similar to the one you did for reply #6?

Sorry - lots of questions...

Hello again Mark, thanks so much for staying with me on this.  I can't stand it when there's a (tech) mystery I can't solve.  ;)  I was wondering if you'd notice the 2 vs. 3 Disks discrepency!  There have only been 2 hard disks in this desktop, both installed by Dell prior to shipment.  Both use the same motherboard port as when it shipped the system shipped Q1 2013.  If you see an extra disk in screen shot #10, it simply means that I had one of my Seagate USB externals plugged-in at the time and the boot CD saw it as Disk #1.  As far as Windows, I'll have to admit to holding my breath when booting for the first time after recovering RECOVERY, but ... all is well and Windows partition assignments are as they've always been (C&D on the SSD, E-I on the SATA).  Will post another Disk Management screen later this evening.

Rick:

I see. It makes me wonder what you'd see in the TI recovery environment if you had an external disk plugged in.

Sometime when you have time, it would still be interesting to see the arrangement of partitons  as requested in post #12 above.

In my example, the disk number and the sectors numbers are made to display. clicking the Column header will sort the columns into numeric order.

As long as I was in Disk Management, I mapped the FAT16 partition to K: and the RECOVERY partition to L:, just so they'd be easier to identify in the attached screen shots and bcdedit dumps.  I'll probably remove the mappings tomorrow.  They seem harmless and don't affect what the mappings look like upon boot w/ rescue disc.  By the way, with the Seatgate external plugged in, it's seen as Disk 1 (and letter N:) by the rescue disc and also doesn't affect the assigned mappings of the SSD or SATA.  The first picture below is the current Disk Management screen (note the K: and L: mappings).  The next two files are new BCD text dumps.  BCD3.txt was generated using the first command string in your reply #13, and BCD4.txt was generated using the second string and pointing to L:\Boot\BCD (another reason I temporarily wanted the L: mapping).  The next two pictures are from utility EasyBCD.  I didn't actually change anything, just captured info.  The first screen is the output from the View Settings button.  The second is from button BCD Backup/Repair -- Change boot drive.  Notice the asterisk adjacent to L:, a.k.a. RECOVERY.  Anyway, thanks again.  Hoping one of us has an "Aha!" moment soon.  ;)  p.s. there is still a rogue (as far as I can tell) \Boot folder on the root of C:.  I've tried to archive it out of the way, but keep getting a message saying that I rquired permission from TrustedInstaller to make changes to it.  Can I just boot up in safe mode and whack it?

Grover, thanks ... I've been thinking about doing just that.  No time this evening, but will revisit post #12 tomorrow and report back.  ;)

Rick:

From your Disk Management screen shot you can see that the only change was to make the Recovery partition active so that the PC boots from this partition (and you also gave it a temporary drive letter). So this verifies that the partition layout did not change.

If you want to delete the \Boot folder from the Windows partition you should boot from the Windows 7 DVD and enter the command prompt. You should be able to delete the folder and its contents from there, although you will first need to change the file attributes to remove the hidden and system attributes, then you can delete it.

However, it doesn't hurt to keep it. Note that you can use Disk Management (or DiskPart from a command prompt) to change the Active flag to the Windows partition or the Recovery partition. Then your PC will boot from whichever partition is active. This might be useful for emergency recovery.

I'll wait until you try what Grover has suggested before commenting about the behavior of ATI in the boot environment. If none of your partitions have changed location or type and your disk drives are still on the same interfaces and are being enumerated the same way by the PC BIOS then the issue clearly lies with how the ATI boot environment is assigning drive letters.

Ok guys, here are the partition numbers and starting sectors from a simulated restore of the full backup from 10/24/2015.  Notice the assigned partition letters ... this is what I want back! :'(

I do not have a FULL backup of the current state of my computer, as I usually only backup W7-SSD-SYS and W7-HDD-DATA (I've trained Windows & apps to store data on a separate partition, H: in Windows).

It might take most of the morning (and afternoon), but do you now need for me to make a new, full image in order to compare it with the one from 10/24 in the attached screen shot?

Rick:

The ATI Linux boot CD is identifying and numbering the partitions correctly; they correspond exactly to what Windows Disk Management shows. From the last attachment you can see that your SSD isn't aligned - the first partition starts at sector 63 instead of sector 2048, but that's a different and unrelated issue to this discussion.

Here's the irony in what I see. Attachment 9 in reply 20 is what I would expect. The Linux environment is unaware of the drive letters assigned by Windows. It assigns its own set of drive letters according to an algorithm that the designers chose. It looks like the Acronis designers chose to follow the algorithm used by Windows (and DOS) when it initially assigns drive letters to a disk, before a user changes them to suit their preferences. The partition on the first hard disk (your SSD) that is marked as "Active" gets drive letter C. The rest are assigned in order, primary partitions first. If there is a second disk the assigments continue through its primary partitions next. Then logical partitions follow, starting with the primary disk, in order, followed by logical partitions on the second disk.

Looking at your attachment 9 in reply 20, that is what I see. On the SSD, the active partition gets letter C, then the other two primary partitions get D and E. On the HDD, the primary partition gets F. Next come the assignments for the logical partitions. The one on the SSD gets letter G, then the ones on the HDD get the remaining letters H, I, J, K, and L, in order. This is the EXPECTED result.

What I do not understand is why the drive letter assignments were any different than this back before your changes last year.

Was anything else changed between then and now? Was TI updated to a different version?

Mark,

I think I follow all of that, but re: your first sentence, "The ATI Linux boot CD is identifying and numbering the partitions correctly; they correspond exactly to what Windows Disk Management shows." ... are you comparing what is shown in "milehiguy_w7_disk_management_2016-01-26.png" with "ATI 2013 tib file (24oct2015) - numbers and sectors.jpg"?

If so, then yes the mappings are the same, but the simulated recovery was from the 10/24 backup and I would expect them to be the same.  I suspect that if I did another full backup of my system today (would take all day, but I'm willing), the partition assignments would look different if I did a simulated restore from it.  Perhaps I misunderstand your comment?

As far as whether anything has changed since that full backup, nothing of any significance really, except for the BCD error in early December that started all of this.  I did purchase and setup a new Synology DS716+ NAS on my home network.  After doing so, I mapped a few of the NAS shared folders within Windows for quick access to music (M:=\\thebox\music), video (V:=\\thebox\video), etc., but none of that should be impacting partition letter assignments upon boot using the True Image boot CD.  Speaking of which, for the past couple of years I've been using TI 2013 by Acronis Plus Pack v.6514 bootable CD for all of my backups.  Every once in awhile I'll perform volume or folder TI backups from within Windows, but that's the exception.

Anyway, still a mystery ... let me know if there's anything else I can provide.  I need to drive all the way into Denver for the afternoon, so I still have time to get a new, FULL backup started if you think that performing a simulated resovery from it would be helpful.  Thanks again for your time.  ;)

Rick

Rick:

I was comparing your latest Disk Management view to attachment 9 in reply 20. The order and size of all of the partitions is the same. The assigned drive letters are different, but not the physical layout on the disk.

I suppose it wouldn't hurt to start another full backup, but I would expect that when you view the resultant full backup, the drive letters should be the same as what you see when you set up the backup.

Out of curiosity, what drive letter assignments do you see when you boot the PC from a Windows 7 repair or installation disk?

Ha!  I actually took a picture this morning of the assignments that the Windows 7 installation disk currently "assigns".  I booted from it and used the command-prompt to whack the \Boot folder from the W7-SSD-SYS partition (a.k.a. my C: drive) this morning.  Running late, so will have to post that and start the new full backup (gulp) late this afternoon or this evening.

Hi Mark,

Re: your question, "Out of curiosity, what drive letter assignments do you see when you boot the PC from a Windows 7 repair or installation disk?"

I just booted again with the Win7 installation disc and pressed Shift-F10 for the command-prompt.  I'd done this a couple of days ago in order to whack the C:\Boot folder since at the present time, the system is booting from RECOVERY.  Just so I wouldn't be guessing, I first listed all drive letters using "wmic logicaldisk get name" and then changed to the root of each and used "dir" to determine exactly what the installation disc is currently seeing.  Below are the results.:

C = RECOVERY
D = XP-HDD-P1
E = W7-SSD-CAPT
F = W7-HDD-P2
G = W7-HDD-P3
H = W7-HDD-DATA
I = W7-HDD-BACKUP
J = W7-HDD-CAPT
K = FAT16 (no volume name, but this is the small DellUtility partition)
L = W7-SSD-SYS
M = CD-ROM drive (showing W7 Professional DVD contents)
X = Boot (probably RAMDISK created for W7 installation)

Very surprising (another permutation!), to me anyway, but I've had a lot of surprises throughout this process!

A couple of other points before I start another FULL True Image backup of both hard disks (the first since 1/24/2015) ... regarding your question about what else might have changed since 10/24 ... in mid November, I was having some shutdown issues, so updated the system BIOS from A9 to A12, the latest and final BIOS released by Dell for this XPS 8500.  Your thoughts on whether or not something in the new BIOS, as it handshakes with the True Image boot CD, could be assigning drive letters at this level that are different than those assigned by A9?

Related to the previous paragraph ... it now dawns upon me that the original "BOOTMGR is missing, Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart" screen that I noticed that started all of this, prompting me to use the Win7 installation DVD to repair the BCD, may have been caused by nothing more than the hard disk drive boot order being reset after having updated the BIOS.  Could be mistaken, but I might have avoided the problem entirely if I'd just reversed the boot order.

Then again, it could be the A9 BIOS itself ... or not!  Anyway, if I can find the disk space (>500GB), I think I'll start the new FULL backup after I post this reply.  When you and/or Grover have time, let me know what you think of the goofy W7 installation DVD drive letters above and my theory re: the BIOS update.  The full backup will take all day most likely, but when it finishes I'll perform a "simulated recovery" from it which will show partition numbers and sectors of the system as it currently exists.

Rick

Rick:

In reply #29 I was going by memory when describing how Windows initially assigns drive letters. Turns out that my memory was not so good. Here are three references that describe this in different ways, but they all agree. Even though the articles are old, they describe exactly what you saw when booted from the Windows 7 repair disk:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/234048
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/51978
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive_letter_assignment

Remember, these are initial assignments when an OS boots for the first time. Thereafter, the assignments are stored in the Registry and are referenced when booting (and the user is free to change most drive letters at will).

Since the Windows 7 repair disk loads into and runs from RAM, its saved drive letter assignments vaporize when the RAMDISK is deleted, so it has to start from scratch each time it boots. The resulting drive letters correspond exactly to what you described in your previous post. On your system the assignment algorithm would go like this:

C - active primary partition on the first HDD (partition 2)
D - first primary partition on the second HDD
E - first logical partition on the first HDD
F - first logical partition on the second HDD
G - second logical partition on the second HDD
H - third logical partition on the second HDD
I - fourth logical partition on the second HDD
J - fifth logical partition on the second HDD
K - first primary partition on the first HDD
L - third primary partition on the first HDD (since the second primary was already assigned in step 1)
M - CD-ROM
X = RAMDISK

It's apparent that Acronis is not using this algorithm on their boot CD. I haven't yet figured out what they're doing. HOWEVER, by now you should realize that drive letters are totally arbitrary and you cannot rely on them being the same between different operating systems. But you CAN rely on partition labels being the same, so you should go by the label, not by the letter, when backing up or restoring with ATI.

On your other points yes, I agree that the BIOS update probably started this, and that it's probably not the A9 BIOS itself. Your comment that the HDD boot order may have been reset is probably correct. If you look in your BIOS settings, does it identify the SSD as disk 1 and the HDD as disk 2 (or is that disk 0 and disk 1)? ATI seems to see it the other way around with the HDD first and the SSD second.

*** BREAKING NEWS ***

Mark,

VERY interesting information and thanks for the links.

Note that I did perform a full backup of both disks on Wed afternoon, the first full backup I've done since last Oct 24.  I don't understand exactly why, but while creating the backup and after examining the resultant .tib file in Windows Explorer, it seems that the volume/partition letter assignmenmts (both at the boot CD/Linux level and within the .tib file) are back to normal, i.e. where they were on 10/24 and for the last 3 years.

If you look again at picture #9 from the other day (Recovery process 00b - partition letters AFTER recovery.jpg), you'll remember that even after I recovered the RECOVERY partition from the 10/24 backup, the letter assignments were still C&D for FAT16&RECOVERY.

Now take a look at the 4 attached pictures below, taken during/after I created the new, full backup on Wed, 1/28.  Regarding the first picture, note that prior to pressing Next to enter archive Comment and start the backup, I did select both Disk 1 and Disk 2 (picture shows the default checkmarks).  Anyway, note the drive letters in these pictures.

The 3rd picture shows the new .tib file partition letter assignments within Windows Explorer.  I've expanded only the H:[W7-HDD-DATA] and L:[RECOVERY], but they're all back to normal.  Just for the heck of it, I did a simulated recovery from the NEW backup file and as you can see in the 4th picture (numbers and sectors), all letter assignments, etc. are as they were in the 10/24/2015 full backup.

Now what has changed since early this past week?

The only two things I can think of, neither of which may matter, are ... I went into the BIOS and reset everything to the A9 default settings, applied, then rebooted.  Years ago when I used to update my BIOS more frequently I always did this, but hadn't done so after this update.

Another thing I did this past week was, as you recall, to assign drive letters K: and L: to the two Dell partitions using Disk Management.  I'd intended to remove these mappings, but decided to leave them after all ... so they've been in the registry ever since.  Might this have a bearing on what the boot CD/Linux sees now?

Anyway, your thoughts would be appreciated.  If nothing else, we might be able to finally close out this thread.  ;)

Rick

I created the new backup on Thurs afternoon, 1/28, not on Wed.  Sorry about that.  ;/

Rick:

The key here is that the ATI boot CD should produce the same drive letter assignments as it did last December if:
a) It's the same boot disk with the same version of ATI,
b) The partition layouts on the disk(s) haven't changed,
c) The same partitions were marked active, and
d) The disks are identified (enumerated) by the BIOS the same way.

It appears that you have successfully done this. My hunch is with d). I think the key was resetting the BIOS to its defaults. At the end of my reply #34 I was getting around to asking about that.

As to your last question, I doubt that assigning drive letters K and L had anything to do with the change, but who knows? What Acronis does to assign letters to partitions in the boot CD is still somewhat of a mystery to me. But you could test this by removing the letters K and L with Disk Management console and seeing what happens.