doesn't see all drives

Perris Calderon

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opened my computer and it sees all drives but vista

interesting, I know it's because it assigned itself "c" even though it's really "d", I guess since vista is actually on "c" it doesn't see it

vista sees 7 but seven doesn't see vista, this sort of suxor because I wanted to use the vista's spare space for storage on both os's

I guess I have to create another partition for vista and move all my files over there, didn't want to do that
 
hmmm, this I am not sure about. I haven't tried dual booting with it. I will try and find something about it though .... I am guessing that you may have to make another partition on the drive so you can see it on both ....
 
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since the os will automatically call itself "c" I think I'm gonna try re-assigning vista a differant drive letter, that will work if it doesn't break the os

will let everyone know if that works or not, unless someone else has tried it and wants to warn me off the attempt
 
yeah. Don't know why, but it seems like no matter what, Windows 7 is ALWAYS missing at least one partition. When i formatted my entire 640GB hard drive to install Windows 7 alone... it wouldn't automatically assign a drive letter to my 1TB drive. When i installed Windows 7 on my 30GB SSD.... it wouldn't assign a drive letter to my Vista partition, but would assign one to my 1TB drive. just go into the Computer Management thing in the Administrative Tools and assign a drive letter to the partition/drive that doesn't have one.
 
Perris be VERY careful, that change of drive letter could easily bork your vista and I really wouldnt do it.
Firstly does windows see it in computer management? Disk manager should be able to show you what windows see's on the disk. Do you use bitlocker at all?
What dual boot loader do you use?
 
Perris be VERY careful, that change of drive letter could easily bork your vista and I really wouldnt do it.
Firstly does windows see it in computer management? Disk manager should be able to show you what windows see's on the disk. Do you use bitlocker at all?
What dual boot loader do you use?

the bios is the boot loader, it's a single partitioned hardrive

I only looked at disc management in vista, I am going to launch the app in 7 next time I boot and see if it sees the space at all

if it sees it as a healthy formatted drive with no letter I'm going to give it a new letter, if it doesn't see it as a drive at all I am certainly not going to format

so overall I agree with that concern but I'm in the mood for a gamble

I have an image of the os so if I have to reformat no big deal, it's also not a critical box, it's gonna be fun to see what happens

here's the theory I'm gonna go on;

if I rename it in 7 that will be for 7's referance not for vista's referance, for instance in vista I named 7's partition "d" but when I boot to 7 it sees this d drive as it's own "c" for it's self referance

my dog thinks he's a person and d thinks it's c

I suppose windows does this because it would have taken too much code for the installers to look at the drive letter before installs

even if windows could do it, and I suppose it could easily, it would have to manage all installers from writers who couldn't figure it out and some programs and drivers might break because they weren't written with complete code taking into consideration drive letters

so I suppose this is a necessary evil and windows stayed with operationg system assigning itself "c" when it runs regardless of the actual drive letter

so I'm gonna swing for it, in 7 I am gonna rename vista "x" and then see if I can boot to it, if not I'll rename it and try again

I'm thinking the biggest problem will be that I break the startup sequence of vista, well see

thanx everyone, if I decide to do it will report back
 
oooh so you have 2 hard disks one with windows 7 and one with vista and you are disabling the boot of the second drive or just changing the boot order?
If its the boot order then yeh the drive should work and its probably due to a drive letter. I have done this in the past and it worked fine (2 hard drives that is) admitely not windows 7 but it really should be fine.
Do a google for change drive letter of windows and it should tell you some of the reg keys you need to edit.
 
oooh so you have 2 hard disks one with windows 7 and one with vista and you are disabling the boot of the second drive or just changing the boot order?
If its the boot order then yeh the drive should work and its probably due to a drive letter. I have done this in the past and it worked fine (2 hard drives that is) admitely not windows 7 but it really should be fine.
Do a google for change drive letter of windows and it should tell you some of the reg keys you need to edit.
it's one physical hardrive, formatted to 4 partions now, one with my image, one for vista, one for 7 and one that just wound up there because I assigned too little space to 7 and that's what was left over

so when you boot to any drive no matter what letter windows calls that drive c regardless, lordofla informed me of this on a previous thread by the way.

now that I've done it I see that assigning itself "c" is for self referance only, it doesn't change the actual letter of the drive that's mounted it just referances itself that way

sort of like charles calling hinself chuck

so I did this but if you are going to do this it must be from the oposite operating system

I launched dskmgt.msc (pasting that into run is the easiest way to get there)

7 saw the drive with no assigned letter and offered me two option;

1)assign the next available letter

2) mount as an ntfs folder

I suppse the safest thing to do would be mounting as a folder but I really wanted to see if changing the letter would bork vista so I took a swing

it worked perfectly, no reboot needed for 7 to see the newly lettered partition

I rebooted to vista to make sure it was not borked and it was not

all is well

I am going to start a new thread to give this some google value

thanx for all the help everyone
 
ZeroHour: i don't really see any reason assigning his Vista drive a drive letter in Windows 7 would cause issues whether it's no the same hard drive or not. No matter what, the OS will always see it's own partition as the C drive, and last i checked, boot loaders go by disk and partition number, not drive letter.
 
When you dual boot vista, with vista,it does not see it. Not like XP,or XP first then vista
and then xp posted vista because it saw it. Has anyone tried using vista boot pro,or editing bcd from vista with 7 installed as dual ??? I bet that if vista is installed and then 7, vista boot pro will pickup 7 and add it to boot loader.
 
I assumed that was what people use.. certainly works with Boot pro on triple boot ... XP /VISTA / 7
 
When you dual boot vista, with vista,it does not see it. Not like XP,or XP first then vista
and then xp posted vista because it saw it. Has anyone tried using vista boot pro,or editing bcd from vista with 7 installed as dual ??? I bet that if vista is installed and then 7, vista boot pro will pickup 7 and add it to boot loader.
this is solved guys, all you have to do is assign a letter to the hidden drive from the operationg system that cant see it

the reason it's hidden is the operating system that's running wants to be "c" even if it's assigned a differant letter, it therefore can't see what is really assigned "c"

put this into run;

diskmgmt.msc, you'll see the hidden drive just assign a letter, you don't have to worry about this designation it's only a referance point for the operating system you are currently booted

the only caveat is that you have to rename this drive from the operating system that cannot see it
 
I have an external HDD which communicates with the pc through a firewire connection. The hard disc works just fine at XP, but at Windows 7 cannot make it see! Any ideas how to fix this!?

Thx
 
I have an external HDD which communicates with the pc through a firewire connection. The hard disc works just fine at XP, but at Windows 7 cannot make it see! Any ideas how to fix this!?

Thx
try tweakfiend's link that's pasted into his response on this thread
 
BTW it appears the Beta has been deliberately designed not to show you other OS partitions. RC1 has this issue fixed so they will show then.
 
try tweakfiend's link that's pasted into his response on this thread
Well....nope can't do this because I cannot see the partition anyware! Firewire is recognize ok (i see it in the control panel), but I can't see anyware the partition! Any other patch/fix/trick?
 
Well....nope can't do this because I cannot see the partition anyware! Firewire is recognize ok (i see it in the control panel), but I can't see anyware the partition! Any other patch/fix/trick?
if you can't see the drive in the applet that appears after you paste diskmgmt.msc into run then I am lost too
 
BTW it appears the Beta has been deliberately designed not to show you other OS partitions. RC1 has this issue fixed so they will show then.

Hrm as I stated above its disabled in the beta currently. You wont see partitions that contain vista etc. Its something they have changed in RC1 when its released due to the complaints I believe.
 
Maddoc,
Wondering,what mobo are you running,and does your mobo have win 7 drivers
for your chipset,or is it running with the garbage drivers that are in win 7 ?
 

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