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Windows XP not displaying drive letters in Disk Manager

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I have several initial factors to disclose, so let’s start from the top.

– Just built new computer from existing parts of W2K system with a few IDE HD’s and 1 USB HD – no problems with the build or driver installation, etc. Everything shows that it is installed and functioning without warning or error in Dev. Mgr.
– New system is XP Pro with all updates installed (SP2+)- added 1 320gb SATA as main boot drive
– 1SATA (Seagate 320GB) as boot (2 part. 130/170GB),
IDE Seagate 300GB (0) – 1 part.,
IDE WD 160GB (1) – 2 part. 75/75gb,
both IDE’s are in SECONDARY controller (due to troubleshooting – no difference between primary/secondary)

Everything seemed fine until I had a $MFT error pop up on my screen for the 300GB IDE drive. I rebooted and all seemed fine (this is not the boot drive – only storage.)

From that point I noticed that Explorer displays the IDE 300GB as 2 drives – exact same info, but it allocates 2 drive letters for the drive.

I naturally entered Drive Manager to change and assign the drive letters properly as I thought it was a mixup.

Inside DM, the ONLY drive that is assigned a drive letter is the 300GB IDE. This is currently listed as X: and is listed as DISK1, Dynamic. All the drives are there and are displaying all the partition information fine, and will accept drive letter assignments and changes that are correctly displayed in Explorer but never in Disk Manager.

I have never seen anything like this, nor can I find anything beyond “how to change drive letters” which I can do in my sleep… I am thinking to re-install XP and see if that will straighten this out, but lots of effort…

Have confirmed that BIOS is recognizing SATA and all IDE’s – boot order has IDE’s disabled and only SATA active – even removed the CD/DVD’s from the boot list.

Remember, ALL is functioning perfect… access to all drives and data are fine, just don’t trust the fact that Disk Mgr & Explorer is confused just after fresh installation.

BTW -IN Disk Mgr:
SATA is Drive 0
IDE 300GB is Drive 1
IDE 160GB is Drive 2
USB 160 is Drive 4
(removable disk is #3)

Open for direction – will try anything for troubleshooting…

Thanks in advance for the trouble!
Cletus

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Clarifications

In reply to Windows XP not displaying drive letters in Disk Manager

Clarifications

Anyone out there

In reply to Windows XP not displaying drive letters in Disk Manager

I thought for sure I’d at least get a response… any ideas folks???

Thanks

partition magic

In reply to Windows XP not displaying drive letters in Disk Manager

download partition magic to straighten out your partitions and assign drive letters and see if it will reflect in dm.Also you can perform a repair of xp by going to start , run and typing sfc/scannow

You are using a Dynamic Disk

In reply to Windows XP not displaying drive letters in Disk Manager

Go to Disk Manager and R Click on the name of the drive itself and Convert it from a Dynamic Disk. The second drive letter should dissapear.

Now, I was using a new disk when I eliminated the extra drive letter, and then I blew away the whole drive and re-allocated the partitions I wanted. If you already have data on your 300Gb, then I’ll bet you will lose this data (but maybe not – you should definitely research this).

But this should definitely eliminate your extra drive letter.

Thanks!

In reply to You are using a Dynamic Disk

Thanks much for the info… I never did figure out why it was there… I found that since I couldn’t find any reference anywhere on my issue that my best bet was to back up and punt… so I moved all the data to other drives and repartitioned the drive and changed it back to a standard drive instead of being Dynamic… I don’t remember my reasoning to make this a dynamic to begin with. So, all is well with the double drive letter…

The boot drive not having a letter was weird, so again, I just started over from scratch and made a new XP disk with all the current updates and drivers – I was then able to recognize all the space without having to use the F6 function during the install and everything is rosy… had to use Knoppix to get a lot of my data transferred and windows decided to stop looking at my drives eventually, but not Linux… every time’s a charm with Knoppix.

Thanks again for the double drive letter tip..

Mike

RE:Windows XP not displaying drive letters in Disk Manager

In reply to Windows XP not displaying drive letters in Disk Manager

It is quite old thread, but thought to share solution which might help others as it worked for me. sol: Delete both drive letter for partition/disk using Disk Management and reassign it.

Solution for missing drive letter problem.

In reply to Windows XP not displaying drive letters in Disk Manager

Here is a solution posted: http://www.experts-exchange.com/OS/Microsoft_Operating_Systems/Windows/XP/Q_24536172.html#a24761924

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