I have a strange problem that I cannot seem to find any search info about, either here or using a normal search engine search. I had a hard drive that was developing a lot of bad sectors, so I bought a new drive, and cloned the old onto the new using Macrium Reflect. I plugged the new drive into my hot-swap drive bay, did the clone, then shut down the system. I opened the case, removed the old permanently installed drive, and in it's place I put the newly cloned drive. Closed up the case, and started the system, and found out that the freshly booted system, nor Windows Explorer could see the newly cloned drive. I then opened Disk Management, and the drive was there, but there were no drive letters assigned to either of the 2 partitions on it. So, I added a drive letter to each partition, and things seemed normal after that, normal access for read/write/deletes and such. Also all the cloned data was on each of the partitions, so that part went well. My problem is that after every reboot, or cold startup, the same thing happens all over again, and I have to add a drive letter to each partition using Disk Management before I can use the newly cloned drive. I don't even get the normal option to change the drive letter, just the ADD button is active. Anyone have any suggestions as to how I can resolve this issue? I've tried un-setting the hidden flag thing, but I'm not sure if it even has a hidden flag on each of those partitions, or the drive itself. And obviously my attempt failed anyway, or I wouldn't be posting this.... I could sure use some help on this one, thanks!
Hello @ ChaserLee - Have you tried assigning a drive letter using the Diskpart Command? It's not that hard, you just have to be sure to select the correct *disk* and **partition** during the process. 1.) Right-click and open an elevated Command Prompt. 2.) Enter "diskpart" 3.) Enter "list disk" ; you'll see a list of all hard disks connected to the system 4.) Enter "sel disk 0" ; in this example I used 0; *use whatever is appropriate on your own system* 5.) Enter "list part" ; you'll see a list of all the partitions on the disk 6.) Enter "sel part 1" ; in this example I used 1; **use whatever is appropriate on your own system** 7.) Enter "assign letter=z" ; in this example I used z; use whatever drive letter you want to use 8.) If both partitions are on the same disk, repeat steps 6 & 7 to assign a drive letter to the second partition 9.) Enter "exit" to exit the diskpart command, then close the Command Prompt. 10.) Cross you fingers and reboot the system, the changes should be permanent.
Thanks @ John Sutherland, I appreciate your detailed instructions! I followed the instructions exactly as you had them written, and diskpart reported a success after assigning a drive letter to each of the partitions on that drive. Then as a double check, after exiting the Admin Shell, I opened Disk Management and it showed the partitions as having a letter assigned to both partitions. Did a reboot, and got the same old result as I've been getting. No drive letter assigned to either partition on that drive. Bummer! Good suggestion, however! Just didn't work, in my case..
You can try AOMEI partition assistant maybe it sticks for assigning drive letters it should work in the free version
I did as you suggested, and used Aomei. I got the same result, successful letter assignment, but not permanent. The letters get lost after a reboot. For good measure I also used Minitool and Paragon, with the same results. The common thing here is that no matter what GUI, shell program, application, whatever.... it's no problem getting a letter assigned to the partitions. The problem is getting that assigned letter to be a permanent thing with the Win 10 OS. For some reason, the OS is just either not remembering the assigned letter, or it removes the letter just before reboot....
Strange stuff man something is realy bogus on your OS did you tried sfc /scannow or dism restore health ?
Don't waste time. If you are replacing a drive, you must prepare it first. Once this is done install the os there and only then can you transfer the files. If the files are transferred most likely You should restore their default default permissions. Otherwise, may not be able to edit, delete, and sometimes not fully use these files. These operatins may be blocked because the files came from other computer and Windows blocks them automatically.
Yes, I did the sfc scan almost at the first when this problem started. No issues reported from the scan... I may have to resort to running a .bat file that uses diskpart to assign the letters to the partitions on each boot and make an entry for it in Task Scheduler, but I thought I'd try for a better solution here before doing that. I'll wait to see if anyone else has suggestions. I feel confident that someone here will have the solution that works for me and my system. Thanks for your help!!
Not wasting time, trying to learn what happened, and how to correct the issue. For me, that's never a waste of time. However, I did prepare the drive before I used Macrium to clone the old drive to it. The old drive was not the System C: drive, it was a data storage drive. So, I'm not installing the OS. As far as the permissions go for the cloned data drive, they are just fine once the partitions get a letter assigned. And finally, all the data files came from this same computer, so all is good there. Thanks anyway.
'Fraid not. I've got a fairly new mobo, and even if it were to be a weak mobo battery, it would happen to all my partition letters, not just the ones on the newly cloned drive. But you get points for thinking outside the box, for sure!
If I understand correctly, the files were never normally *copied* to this new drive, only "imaged" using Macrium? To me it looks like Macrium imaged "something" onto the drive that's not supposed to be there. (You mentioned possible bad sectors, maybe right in the middle of file index tables, etc.) If I were you (and I've had similar cases), I would try a normal Explorer copy to a different drive, then remove the partitions (eg. diskpart Clean), then start fresh (create partitions, copy back data).
Thanks. Then it's a completely different situation when it was a store drive. Just one question - did you clone the whole drive or copied the files only? If You cloned a drive, it may cause the problem. Prepare the drive again and clone only content. PS. What's the partition type and how big is that disk?
I always think outside the box as sometimes its the only way to get stuff fixed, Just trying to help! Forgot you mentioned you had other partitions that are fine. If you have logged in as admin and set up the drive letters and they won`t stay perminate then for some reason your not getting admin privileges because that should have worked. Here is something to think about do you have software installed that totally takes total control of your drives through windows for top performance? The only reason I say that is I ran into a similar issue but not with hard drives but power options. Windows would not allow me to makes changes to my power setting in my new MSI Gaming Laptop. Comes to find out after a little bit of research is was the systems control centre software that came with the laptop that took total control of it for gaming purposes. software installed could be the problem and again thinking outside the box, Just sayin`
Issue with "normal copying" is loss of original creation & modification dates of files & folders.I use a gui front of robocopy & it works flawlessly once you learn it(for my usage case scenario of copying entire drive(using drive letter) & folder(with some folders inside excluded) I just saved the 2 lines of commands I figured out). I also agree that likely macrium did copy something from the problematic drive which is causing this issue.Try running chkdsk /f on new drive.
And sometimes my friend time is required if you want to get better and learn. Windows and computer hardware/software issues are not always an easy answer or fix. A lot of times it requires time, knowledge and research to solve!
Just a guess: Drive letter associations are stored in the following Registry key: Code: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices Possibly the permissions of this key are messed up so the associations cannot be stored permanently. Or there are old stale entries that need to be removed.
If it is possible for you to do so and losing extended attributes such as file creation dates, last access etc is not an issue. A bang on dead easy fix for this is to copy all of the data to another location, delete all volumes on the new drive and use either the Diskpart command line or the Disk Management MMC snapin to create your partitions and assign drive letters. Then copy the data back and your issue should be gone.