I installed W8 Pro on a hdd with 13 partitions. When I attached another hdd with 12 partitions, W8 would not boot. In fact I cannot even do a fresh install of W8 with both hdds attached. I tried hiding most of the partitions on the second hdd, no luck. So let me know if : - you are running W8 with more than say 24 partitions, or - you faced a similar problem ( so I'll know I have not messed up ) Thanks.
What was error? Hope you select the right drive under bios boot preferences... If your disks are MBR then max 4 partitions per disk. 4 primary or 3 Primary + 21 logical - Optical drive(s) if any(Letters limitation)... Check your primary partition counts & mount additional drives. EFI specification mandates that a GUID Partition Table, be capable of containing a minimum of 128 partitions of any size.
I should have mentioned this - I was installing via UFD. W7 installed on another primary works just fine. W8 worked fine with just one hdd. When I attached the second hdd, even a W8 repair did not work. Doing a fresh install with two hdds ( all primary parts hidden except the one I'm installing to ) while installing it copies a few files and then I get a pop-up saying a certain file not found. This does not happen when only one hdd is attached so there are no missing/corrupted files on the UFD.
Have you checked your BIOS setup?...Windows doesn't boot, go into the BIOS and make sure the drive with the OS is first in the list of hdd and it's the boot driver.
If I'm not totally wrong, the problem is related to the available Drive letters! How many Latter the latin alphabet contains? Isn't it 26 letter from A to Z? 13 partitions used on first HDD and 12 on the second = 25 drives (as Windows will see it!)! Plus 1 USB Drive for installation means a total of 26 drives already! I'm just an imperfect human and would like to see if some of those "perfect" one could enlighten me! Thanks!
Should be even less, as you should be not able to assign Letter "A" and "B", because they are reserved for FDD"s.
- both hdds were MBR. - installed W8 from a USB flash "thumb" drive. - hid some of the partitions on the second hdd, so < 20 visible 'drives'. same prob. - W7 works ok even with all partitions unhidden, even though some are not visible.
You could disable Floppy drives in BIOS and get those 2 letters free as well! I use drive A and B as Data drives with rmoveable HDD's in all of my computers since some years now! Work just well and move the drive from on to an other computer will have all times the same drive letter, for sure if setup correctly!!
Then vymrdal is right & you need M$ help As suggested by him post problem with M$ blog. Its not just lettering problem..
It's not because of the direct lettering! AFAIK the recognizable partitions are limited to the amount of max. available letters the alphabet has. That was in the past and I hardly believe that MS has changed that with the latest's OS's! Just go ahead and prepare 5 HDD's, each with 10 or even just 6 Partition's and place one after the next one in an Computer. you'll not be able to "see" all partitions or have access to them in the same time as well as not to be abvle to give ALL partitions it's own drive letter!
Theory and praxis differs in many means not only sometimes even often! Test it on live environment and after done that compare your own experiences with what you had learned in Theory. Not forget to follow the limitation the OP has described in his opening post! Maybe you'll shake your head because you still believe the learned Theory! Ah...., forget, I had read your and the other post's already before, but change my comment!
Back in end of the year 1996, we installed a Network Server, a Compaq Proliant 2500/200 for Novell Netware 4 and also one for Windows NT 3.51, which updated later on to NT 4.0. Both Server had each 128 MB Memory while standard were 32 MB and max. 1 GB for that Machine. Also the CPU were 6 x Pentium Pro 200MHz. HDD were SCSI UW Hotplug (80pin) running on 2 internal Adaptech Controllers which supported each up to 15 SCSI drives per controller. In the Server itself were 5 SCSI HDD all 9.1GB and 3 HDD towers which each 6 SCSI HDD's each 9.1GB, while 7 HDD Bays were available, we was keeping one empty for swapping in each tower. As we also was need a Floppy drive working and an CD Rom Reader, we could max using 24 HDD's in total but used 23 to have min. 1 spare free to assign. All of that were just done because of the limit of the available drive letters. There wasn't any way for to use more drives at the same time to access. Those Netware Server was run for an Drug Wholesaler while the NT Server were run for an Public Company producing Baby Feeding products like Milk Bottles, Pacifiers and others. As I wrote in my post before, I hardly believe that MS has changed the way how Windows would handle the drives connected to the OS. They never had make everything public about such changes and there isn't any Windows I ever had seen could handle such amount of drives, not physical and not logical. Maybe the amount of logical Partitions are not limited but in reality they're not accessible from within Windows at the same time as the others! But if someone has information about that those is possible, I would be happy to learn about that.
It are always the same members involved into rants. Nobody of them is in a way better than another.....all of them have the weakness that their ego re-acts in a childish way. I am waiting to see if one of them is able to change the behavior and will show some strength and matureness... who is the first?
^ Done. I'm really surprised no one is runing W8 with so many partitions. I know guys who have 4 hdds on their system ....
Actually i have 6 hdds on one of my rigs,but not so many partitions,for what? 2 or 3 at the most is sufficient,IMHO