Why is one of my Data drives denoted as a "System" Drive?

Mel_P · 4 Nov 2013 at 00:51

- Hello. I have an SSD OS drive (C: ) and 2 1 x 1TB "data" drives (D: and F: ) - but one of the 1TB drives seems to have adopted some "system" status.

Any suggestions why this is and how to "remove" this system status - if I try to take an image in Windows 7 it wants to copy the whole of the "D:" drive (see above for IDs)

C.R.A.Z.Y · 4 Nov 2013 at 02:41

Mini Tool Partition Wizard Home Ed, 8.1.1 allows you to set partitions as logical, maybe try that ??
Never needed to do it myself and personally wouldn't do it too a drive that the DATA isn't backed up on as messing with partitions can obviously end in tears!

marc2003 · 4 Nov 2013 at 09:14

something went wrong during setup which is why i always temporarily unplug other drives on a multi drive system to prevent this kind of thing happening. also it might not have happened if the SSD was plugged into the first port (one with the lowest number, usually 0)

you could try unplugging your other drives and then booting from your windows 8 dvd/usb and running startup repair (i think there is an option something like that

). if you can get the SSD booting without the other disks plugged in then you should be alright.

Mel_P · 4 Nov 2013 at 09:41

marc2003 said:
something went wrong during setup which is why i always temporarily unplug other drives on a multi drive system to prevent this kind of thing happening. also it might not have happened if the SSD was plugged into the first port (one with the lowest number, usually 0)

you could try unplugging your other drives and then booting from your windows 8 dvd/usb and running startup repair (i think there is an option something like that ). if you can get the SSD booting without the other disks plugged in then you should be alright.

The SSD will boot without the other drives connected. The logical numbers don't seem to relate to the physical layout! I had to run a start up repair recently and I did that with all other drives disconnected.

Perhaps it's happened because I use the TB drives for things like caches and working areas for software?

Thanks for replies.

marc2003 · 4 Nov 2013 at 10:13

Mel_P said:
The SSD will boot without the other drives not connected.

eh??

i assume you mean the SSD will boot without the other drives connected? i must admit, i didn't think that was going to be possible when i saw your screenshot.

perhaps you can mark the data drive as non active? but obvious disclaimers about backups etc...

i have 2 drives in my system and my data drive isn't active even though it only has one partition.

Perhaps it's happened because I use the TB drives for things like caches and working areas for software?

if you're using it for the pagefile, that could be the issue. you should keep that on the SSD but reduce the size to 2GB. i think that's what most people around here do. other software shouldn't affect it all.

bledd · 4 Nov 2013 at 10:41

I always remove all drives (besides one) when doing a Windows install. Stops things like this happening

Mel_P · 4 Nov 2013 at 12:45

marc2003 said:
eh?? i assume you mean the SSD will boot without the other drives connected?

Yes!

Mel_P · 4 Nov 2013 at 12:46

marc2003 said:
if you're using it for the pagefile, that could be the issue. you should keep that on the SSD but reduce the size to 2GB. i think that's what most people around here do. other software shouldn't affect it all.

Will look at that - thanks, Mel