Re-installed Vista, boot info on another drive?

[Furton]

I've re-installed Vista as I've done some upgrading however it now seems to have used my spare 500GB drive as a boot drive and given it the drive letter D:. I've tried to delete it as I want my File Store partition to be D: and Backup to be E:. What's Vista installed on this other drive that won't allow me to delete it?

[streetster]

within Disk Management, can you assign the Backup drive to be, say, Q: and then put File Store to D:, and then backup back to E:?


or alternatively, format it first, then try moving it around...

[Furton]

within Disk Management, can you assign the Backup drive to be, say, Q: and then put File Store to D:, and then backup back to E:?


or alternatively, format it first, then try moving it around...

Tried that, wouldn't let me. Did boot up with the Vista disc and deleted the drive from the install screen then quit but then it wouldn't boot up, so had to use the repair option which reverted it back to that state again.

[streetster]

How odd... tried doing it in Safe Mode?

[Splash]

Not sure if it helps but Definitions for system volume and boot volume might help explain what the system and boot volumes are (confusingly the system partition holds the boot files, and the boot partition holds the system files...)

Out of interest why is it important for you that D: not be the boot drive?

[Furton]

Not sure if it helps but Definitions for system volume and boot volume might help explain what the system and boot volumes are (confusingly the system partition holds the boot files, and the boot partition holds the system files...)

Out of interest why is it important for you that D: not be the boot drive?

Because I've backed up my playlists e.t.c and they all reference d:FileStore, so if File store is on E: then it'll take ages to sort out, and I like being a fussy bugger

[Splash]

Ah right, I see what you mean now. It's less an issue with the system partition being on D:, rather that you have a requirement for Filestore to be E:

Is that right?

[Furton]

File store needs to be on D:

[Paul Adams]

Your 500GB physical drive was enumerated first by the BIOS when you booted off the DVD to install Windows, so that is where your boot manager and loader got installed (the "System" volume), and you specified the other physical drive as the location for Windows (the "Boot" volume).

Both of these are critical to Windows, so cannot be dismounted, formatted from within Windows or have their drive letters changed.

What you could try is to disconnect your 500GB drive, then boot from the Vista DVD and select the repair option to see if it can find the installation and add the boot manager & loader for you - eject the DVD and make sure your system boots with the 1 disk connected now.
Using Disk Management, if the volume labelled "File Store" is not D:, you should be able to reassign the letter for it.

Now you should be able to reconnect the 500GB disk, check the boot order in your BIOS is the "non-500GB disk" first, then boot up and check the drive letters.
If you are still booting off the "real" System volume, C: should read System,Boot,Active,Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition under "Status".

[Furton]

Cheers for the in-depth reply Paul, however before reading your message I did a full re-install as I had just received a new 8800GT so was a good excuse to start from scratch.