I haven't been able to find answers for these anywhere, so I'd thought I could ask here anyways. My portable hard drive used to never have this issue, but when I had used the WindowsToGo standard deploy tool, none of my partitions are given drive letters automatically. This even happens on computers I've never used before. Its become a pain as not all of the machines I use it on have administrator access to add them back. Also, I'm not sure if its a general Win8 issue, but I have a folder on the root of the usb and the permissions are reset on the folder every time I reboot WinToGo. I have the owner set to the generic users group (it still stays the same), but in the rights the users group are removed. Anyone have experience with these issues as well?
That's normal behaviour of Win2Go. As you setup the Win2Go drive and install the OS, the bootable OS will create that as Drive "C" and if you try to access that drive from within an running Windows 8, you could not see the Drive because it's "C" Drive come in conflict with your normal Windows which also uses Drive "C"! You need to use the Disk Management Tool for to give that Win2Go drive a different and free drive letter. Nothing wrong with it an understandable.
I think this may not be the real reason. I have a PC with 4 partitions and DVD. All partitions have drive letters (C:, D:, E:, F: and G: = DVD). But not only drive letter C: is invisible in Windows 8 To Go - also D:, E: and F:. So I think it's more a group policy that's refuses the assignment of drive letters to all local dives.
That's also normal! If you boot from Win2Go, you'll not get the drive letters of that computer which which you hardware you use for to boot the Win2Go. You'll need to go to the Disk Management Tool and ad the drive from the Host-Computer to your list of accessible drives. After you disconnect the Win2Go Drive and/or start it on an other Host-Computer, that "game" start's again. That's the way it works for me for more than a year already!
Windows has a hidden partition c: which is the real C drive, and a fake partition c: which is what it calls the C drive from the file explorer. It's not actually C drive, it's like F drive or G drive. They started doing this duality stuff in win7. It's a little bothersome when dealing with stuff like wintogo. Try assigning drive letters like pisthai suggested. That might help you out a bit. I haven't actually done it myself, but it makes sense if you can get it working for you.
My "Windows 8 To Go" has no hidden or "fake" partition. I always disable the "System reserved partition" and boot files resides on C: partition. My "Windows 8 To Go" has only one partition. It's no problem to solve assigning drive letters for local disks via Disk Management Tool. I wanted to know why local drives have per default no drive letters. And I don't believe the argument of "pisthai" it's because collision of drive letter assignment: Because in my case I have drive letters D:, E: and F: and they do not conflict with drive letter C: of the "Windows 8 To Go". My argument with "group policy" not so far-fetched. See the problem with store access: Per default "Windows To Go" has no store access. Only when you allow it with "group policy".
As a quite long time user of Win2Go, i could tell you that all drive letters of "external" HDD are gone in the same moment you connect the Win2Go drive to an other than the last computer! I don't mind you believe me or not, that just my experiences over more than a year of using Win2Go! If you want to know more details, go to the Microsoft Helpdesk, may they could enlighten you!
I think all system drives are aliased to c drive in file explorer regardless of your assignment, so that's correct. I'm curious if extra drives connected via usb keep their drive assignments though...
The problem is if you boot from the Win2Go drive! Latest if you changed the Host Computer (the machine you use to boot up Win2Go) you'll not see the drive letters of the drive of that Host Computer and need to assign them manually again via Disk Management Tool. If you've more than 1 + System Reserved Partition on the Win2Go drive, you could those still see normally.
'Tis odd for sure. How does this even happen with XP? Do I need to adjust the partition type in something like gparted to restore this to normally mount? I remember when I had deployed it via the powershell wim2vhd (using the usb partition as the "vhd") the drives were mounted normally. Also, I had it skip the formatting part as well. Also, has anyone had experience with the permissions reset issue?
You don't mount the Win2Go drive, you boot from it to the OS installed on it! You even could not mount (means: run Win2Go from that external HDD/USB Drive )the Win2Go drive from an running Windows operating system. The Windows To Go is an fully working and activated Operating System which you could use from any capable computer. Mainly Windows To Go was build for System Administration and Services in Corporate sector which using Volume Licensing and not for the private public sector. It is not and VHD (Virtual Hard Drive) in any means!
Interesting... So if you had drives assigned to d and e, such as 2 extra hard drives, it would re-assign them all to the first letter available?