Aller au contenu principal

CD back up mixed up drives

Thread needs solution

I have done my first backup from CD with 2011. This is how I have been using the back up for a long time. BUT what I have never had before, with a number of versions, is the drives are mixed up, C has become D etc. I have been used to the backup drive sometimes being wrongly labelled as D rather thane and not never had C wrong before. It’s a bit off putting and I expect it can be sorted if restoring (but undoubtedly need messing about) but is this common problem with 2011?

0 Users found this helpful

John:

You have to ignore the drive letters when viewing the partitions with the boot CD. Instead give your partitions meaningful names or go by their sizes. Drive letters are only meaningful when viewed from the running Windows system from which they were assigned. If you back up your Windows partition, usually C:, and then restore it to the same partition on the disk, the drive letter will be C: after restoration no matter what the boot CD calls it.

This is a Windows issue - drive letters should be banished from the face of the earth because they are relative whereas most users assume that they are absolute.

Whether this is new to 2011 I am not sure. Most likely, the issue is that the first partition is a Windws non-lettered partition but the CD has assigned a letter to this partition. The letters assigned by the CD are meaningless and it is Windows which will re-assign the drive letters during bootup. Most likely, Windows will continue to not assign a drive letter if one was not assigned before but you really will not know until you do a restore--especially to a new larger disk.