Recovery Imagbe (D:)

I just bought and installed Windows 8 on my older desktop after
replacing the hard drive with a new Western Digital 1TB drive. I
formatted this new drive, putting it in an external hard drive case
and using my other computer. The format went well and I partitioned
it into OS (C and Recovery (D then put it into the compute and
installed a new copy of Windows 8.

All went well and the whole computer seems to be operating okay but I
can not read the Recovery (D drive. It doesn't show on the Windows
Explorer as expected, along with OS (C.

I did find this partition when I opened Ctrl PnlDevice ManagerDisk
DrivesWDC WD10EARX-00N0YB0 ATA Device then selected the Volumes Tab
and clicked on the Populate button. The Volumes box shows both the OS
(C drive: 953517 MB and the Recovery Image: 350 MB but it doesn't
show any drive letter designation for the Recovery Image partition.
This same setup on my new HP Pavilion with Windows 8 pre-installed
show the Recovery Image (D as expected.

Why does the drive letter not show on the computer I just upgraded to
Windows 8 from Windows 7? How can I get it to assign drive letter D:
to this partition? Gordon

"Gordon" wrote in message ...
I just bought and installed Windows 8 on my older desktop after
replacing the hard drive with a new Western Digital 1TB drive. I
formatted this new drive, putting it in an external hard drive case
and using my other computer. The format went well and I partitioned
it into OS (C and Recovery (D then put it into the compute and
installed a new copy of Windows 8.

All went well and the whole computer seems to be operating okay but I
can not read the Recovery (D drive. It doesn't show on the Windows
Explorer as expected, along with OS (C.

I did find this partition when I opened Ctrl PnlDevice ManagerDisk
DrivesWDC WD10EARX-00N0YB0 ATA Device then selected the Volumes Tab
and clicked on the Populate button. The Volumes box shows both the OS
(C drive: 953517 MB and the Recovery Image: 350 MB but it doesn't
show any drive letter designation for the Recovery Image partition.
This same setup on my new HP Pavilion with Windows 8 pre-installed
show the Recovery Image (D as expected.

Why does the drive letter not show on the computer I just upgraded to
Windows 8 from Windows 7? How can I get it to assign drive letter D:
to this partition? Gordon

Try giving it a drive letter in Disk Management.
Right-click Computer Manage Disk Management.
Right-click the partition and assign a letter.

On 1/13/2013 12:54 PM, Gordon wrote:
I just bought and installed Windows 8 on my older desktop after
replacing the hard drive with a new Western Digital 1TB drive. I
formatted this new drive, putting it in an external hard drive case
and using my other computer. The format went well and I partitioned
it into OS (C and Recovery (D then put it into the compute and
installed a new copy of Windows 8.

All went well and the whole computer seems to be operating okay but I
can not read the Recovery (D drive. It doesn't show on the Windows
Explorer as expected, along with OS (C.

I did find this partition when I opened Ctrl PnlDevice ManagerDisk
DrivesWDC WD10EARX-00N0YB0 ATA Device then selected the Volumes Tab
and clicked on the Populate button. The Volumes box shows both the OS
(C drive: 953517 MB and the Recovery Image: 350 MB but it doesn't
show any drive letter designation for the Recovery Image partition.
This same setup on my new HP Pavilion with Windows 8 pre-installed
show the Recovery Image (D as expected.

Why does the drive letter not show on the computer I just upgraded to
Windows 8 from Windows 7? How can I get it to assign drive letter D:
to this partition? Gordon

It is easy to tell you how to give the recovery partition a drive letter
called D. But what is that going to give you? There shouldn't be
anything in there that an user needs or wants in there. So whether a
drive letter show for it or not shouldn't even matter. It's sole purpose
is to recover (or repair) the original installed OS. And 350MB isn't
very big to be very helpful anyway. That sounds only large enough to
boot WinPE and that is all. And it probably asks you to insert the real
recovery CD/DVD discs for the process to continue.

UPDATE: I see Dave-UK told you how to assign a drive letter to the
recovery partition. Careful, you could make it unusable for recovery if
you do. It all depends on what kind of recovery software it is using.

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - Thunderbird v12
Centrino Core2 Duo T7400 2.16 GHz - 4GB - Windows 8

On Sun, 13 Jan 2013 19:14:59 -0000, "Dave-UK" wrote:


"Gordon" wrote in message ...
I just bought and installed Windows 8 on my older desktop after
replacing the hard drive with a new Western Digital 1TB drive. I
formatted this new drive, putting it in an external hard drive case
and using my other computer. The format went well and I partitioned
it into OS (C and Recovery (D then put it into the compute and
installed a new copy of Windows 8.

All went well and the whole computer seems to be operating okay but I
can not read the Recovery (D drive. It doesn't show on the Windows
Explorer as expected, along with OS (C.

I did find this partition when I opened Ctrl PnlDevice ManagerDisk
DrivesWDC WD10EARX-00N0YB0 ATA Device then selected the Volumes Tab
and clicked on the Populate button. The Volumes box shows both the OS
(C drive: 953517 MB and the Recovery Image: 350 MB but it doesn't
show any drive letter designation for the Recovery Image partition.
This same setup on my new HP Pavilion with Windows 8 pre-installed
show the Recovery Image (D as expected.

Why does the drive letter not show on the computer I just upgraded to
Windows 8 from Windows 7? How can I get it to assign drive letter D:
to this partition? Gordon

Try giving it a drive letter in Disk Management.
Right-click Computer Manage Disk Management.
Right-click the partition and assign a letter.

Thanks, Dave. This fixed the problem. It all seems to be working well,
now. Gordon

On Sun, 13 Jan 2013 13:20:49 -0600, BillW50 wrote:

On 1/13/2013 12:54 PM, Gordon wrote:
I just bought and installed Windows 8 on my older desktop after
replacing the hard drive with a new Western Digital 1TB drive. I
formatted this new drive, putting it in an external hard drive case
and using my other computer. The format went well and I partitioned
it into OS (C and Recovery (D then put it into the compute and
installed a new copy of Windows 8.

All went well and the whole computer seems to be operating okay but I
can not read the Recovery (D drive. It doesn't show on the Windows
Explorer as expected, along with OS (C.

I did find this partition when I opened Ctrl PnlDevice ManagerDisk
DrivesWDC WD10EARX-00N0YB0 ATA Device then selected the Volumes Tab
and clicked on the Populate button. The Volumes box shows both the OS
(C drive: 953517 MB and the Recovery Image: 350 MB but it doesn't
show any drive letter designation for the Recovery Image partition.
This same setup on my new HP Pavilion with Windows 8 pre-installed
show the Recovery Image (D as expected.

Why does the drive letter not show on the computer I just upgraded to
Windows 8 from Windows 7? How can I get it to assign drive letter D:
to this partition? Gordon

It is easy to tell you how to give the recovery partition a drive letter
called D. But what is that going to give you? There shouldn't be
anything in there that an user needs or wants in there. So whether a
drive letter show for it or not shouldn't even matter. It's sole purpose
is to recover (or repair) the original installed OS. And 350MB isn't
very big to be very helpful anyway. That sounds only large enough to
boot WinPE and that is all. And it probably asks you to insert the real
recovery CD/DVD discs for the process to continue.

UPDATE: I see Dave-UK told you how to assign a drive letter to the
recovery partition. Careful, you could make it unusable for recovery if
you do. It all depends on what kind of recovery software it is using.

Bill, all I'm trying to do is get both computers set up with the same
drive letters representing the same types of drives so I won't be so
easily confused when jumping back and forth between the two computers.
My new HP Pavilion with Windows 8 pre-instaled was set up this way and
I was just trying to get the refurbished old comptuer set up the same
way. Gordon

BillW50 wrote:
On 1/13/2013 12:54 PM, Gordon wrote:
I just bought and installed Windows 8 on my older desktop after
replacing the hard drive with a new Western Digital 1TB drive. I
formatted this new drive, putting it in an external hard drive case
and using my other computer. The format went well and I partitioned
it into OS (C and Recovery (D then put it into the compute and
installed a new copy of Windows 8.

All went well and the whole computer seems to be operating okay but I
can not read the Recovery (D drive. It doesn't show on the Windows
Explorer as expected, along with OS (C.

I did find this partition when I opened Ctrl PnlDevice ManagerDisk
DrivesWDC WD10EARX-00N0YB0 ATA Device then selected the Volumes Tab
and clicked on the Populate button. The Volumes box shows both the OS
(C drive: 953517 MB and the Recovery Image: 350 MB but it doesn't
show any drive letter designation for the Recovery Image partition.
This same setup on my new HP Pavilion with Windows 8 pre-installed
show the Recovery Image (D as expected.

Why does the drive letter not show on the computer I just upgraded to
Windows 8 from Windows 7? How can I get it to assign drive letter D:
to this partition? Gordon

It is easy to tell you how to give the recovery partition a drive letter
called D. But what is that going to give you? There shouldn't be
anything in there that an user needs or wants in there. So whether a
drive letter show for it or not shouldn't even matter. It's sole purpose
is to recover (or repair) the original installed OS. And 350MB isn't
very big to be very helpful anyway. That sounds only large enough to
boot WinPE and that is all. And it probably asks you to insert the real
recovery CD/DVD discs for the process to continue.

UPDATE: I see Dave-UK told you how to assign a drive letter to the
recovery partition. Careful, you could make it unusable for recovery if
you do. It all depends on what kind of recovery software it is using.


While in Disk Management, also review the "description" shown for the
partitions. Possible values are "System", "Boot", "Pagefile". Those
are the values I've seen.

If the partition says "System", then it's a boot partition.
If the partition says "Boot", then it has the C: system files.
The labels are the opposite of what you'd think.

If there is anything stored in that partition at all, it is likely
boot files. In which case the label would be "System". For example,
perhaps something "BCD" related is stored in there. The one labeled
"System", likely has the boot flag set as well (since Windows
boot process, the MBR looks for the boot flag being assigned to
one partition, and booting then transfers to that partition).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boot_Co...iguration_Data

If the partition has none of those labels, and "System" and "Boot"
labels are assigned to the main (big) partition, maybe there's nothing
in there of interest at all.

If you assign a drive letter, or otherwise make the partition
visible, there is a remote possibility System Restore will see
it, and start tracking changes. I've read of the odd case,
where the partition "becomes full" or dialog boxes appear
"warning that a partition is nearly full", and the reason is because
System Restore got enabled. So while it's fun to make the
partition visible, that could be a side effect. You'd probably
want System Restore turned off for that partition. Unless,
perhaps, you regularly screw around with the BCD file, and
need a quick means to restore it.

Paul

On 1/13/2013 1:36 PM, Gordon wrote:
On Sun, 13 Jan 2013 13:20:49 -0600, wrote:

On 1/13/2013 12:54 PM, Gordon wrote:
I just bought and installed Windows 8 on my older desktop after
replacing the hard drive with a new Western Digital 1TB drive. I
formatted this new drive, putting it in an external hard drive case
and using my other computer. The format went well and I partitioned
it into OS (C and Recovery (D then put it into the compute and
installed a new copy of Windows 8.

All went well and the whole computer seems to be operating okay but I
can not read the Recovery (D drive. It doesn't show on the Windows
Explorer as expected, along with OS (C.

I did find this partition when I opened Ctrl PnlDevice ManagerDisk
DrivesWDC WD10EARX-00N0YB0 ATA Device then selected the Volumes Tab
and clicked on the Populate button. The Volumes box shows both the OS
(C drive: 953517 MB and the Recovery Image: 350 MB but it doesn't
show any drive letter designation for the Recovery Image partition.
This same setup on my new HP Pavilion with Windows 8 pre-installed
show the Recovery Image (D as expected.

Why does the drive letter not show on the computer I just upgraded to
Windows 8 from Windows 7? How can I get it to assign drive letter D:
to this partition? Gordon

It is easy to tell you how to give the recovery partition a drive letter
called D. But what is that going to give you? There shouldn't be
anything in there that an user needs or wants in there. So whether a
drive letter show for it or not shouldn't even matter. It's sole purpose
is to recover (or repair) the original installed OS. And 350MB isn't
very big to be very helpful anyway. That sounds only large enough to
boot WinPE and that is all. And it probably asks you to insert the real
recovery CD/DVD discs for the process to continue.

UPDATE: I see Dave-UK told you how to assign a drive letter to the
recovery partition. Careful, you could make it unusable for recovery if
you do. It all depends on what kind of recovery software it is using.

Bill, all I'm trying to do is get both computers set up with the same
drive letters representing the same types of drives so I won't be so
easily confused when jumping back and forth between the two computers.
My new HP Pavilion with Windows 8 pre-instaled was set up this way and
I was just trying to get the refurbished old comptuer set up the same
way. Gordon

I see you already told Dave-UK that it worked and everything appears ok.
Well that is a happy ending for sure. But both Paul and myself warnings
were you could have messed things up so badly that it becomes unbootable
and thus unusable. Easy enough for Paul and myself to reverse, but you
could have been in some really serious trouble. I am so glad that didn't
happen. ;-)

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - Thunderbird v12
Centrino Core2 Duo T7400 2.16 GHz - 4GB - Windows 8

On Sun, 13 Jan 2013 14:38:47 -0500, Paul wrote:

BillW50 wrote:
On 1/13/2013 12:54 PM, Gordon wrote:
I just bought and installed Windows 8 on my older desktop after
replacing the hard drive with a new Western Digital 1TB drive. I
formatted this new drive, putting it in an external hard drive case
and using my other computer. The format went well and I partitioned
it into OS (C and Recovery (D then put it into the compute and
installed a new copy of Windows 8.

All went well and the whole computer seems to be operating okay but I
can not read the Recovery (D drive. It doesn't show on the Windows
Explorer as expected, along with OS (C.

I did find this partition when I opened Ctrl PnlDevice ManagerDisk
DrivesWDC WD10EARX-00N0YB0 ATA Device then selected the Volumes Tab
and clicked on the Populate button. The Volumes box shows both the OS
(C drive: 953517 MB and the Recovery Image: 350 MB but it doesn't
show any drive letter designation for the Recovery Image partition.
This same setup on my new HP Pavilion with Windows 8 pre-installed
show the Recovery Image (D as expected.

Why does the drive letter not show on the computer I just upgraded to
Windows 8 from Windows 7? How can I get it to assign drive letter D:
to this partition? Gordon

It is easy to tell you how to give the recovery partition a drive letter
called D. But what is that going to give you? There shouldn't be
anything in there that an user needs or wants in there. So whether a
drive letter show for it or not shouldn't even matter. It's sole purpose
is to recover (or repair) the original installed OS. And 350MB isn't
very big to be very helpful anyway. That sounds only large enough to
boot WinPE and that is all. And it probably asks you to insert the real
recovery CD/DVD discs for the process to continue.

UPDATE: I see Dave-UK told you how to assign a drive letter to the
recovery partition. Careful, you could make it unusable for recovery if
you do. It all depends on what kind of recovery software it is using.


While in Disk Management, also review the "description" shown for the
partitions. Possible values are "System", "Boot", "Pagefile". Those
are the values I've seen.

If the partition says "System", then it's a boot partition.
If the partition says "Boot", then it has the C: system files.
The labels are the opposite of what you'd think.

If there is anything stored in that partition at all, it is likely
boot files. In which case the label would be "System". For example,
perhaps something "BCD" related is stored in there. The one labeled
"System", likely has the boot flag set as well (since Windows
boot process, the MBR looks for the boot flag being assigned to
one partition, and booting then transfers to that partition).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boot_Co...iguration_Data

If the partition has none of those labels, and "System" and "Boot"
labels are assigned to the main (big) partition, maybe there's nothing
in there of interest at all.

If you assign a drive letter, or otherwise make the partition
visible, there is a remote possibility System Restore will see
it, and start tracking changes. I've read of the odd case,
where the partition "becomes full" or dialog boxes appear
"warning that a partition is nearly full", and the reason is because
System Restore got enabled. So while it's fun to make the
partition visible, that could be a side effect. You'd probably
want System Restore turned off for that partition. Unless,
perhaps, you regularly screw around with the BCD file, and
need a quick means to restore it.

Paul

Paul, I just checked and all seems to be in good shape. Disk
Management shows two partitions for Disc 0 Basic 939.51 GB Online.

The first one is shown as Recovery Image (D 350 MB NTFS Healthy
(System, Active, Primary Partition)

There is nothing written to this partition, yet, but it should be used
if/when I or the system does a restore or some other such.

The other partition is shown as OS (C 931.17 GB NTFS Healthy (Boot,
Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition)

Then it shows the CD-ROM 0 as DVD (E No Media. It seems that
everything is set up okay and should work well.

Gordon

Hi, Gordon.

In addition to assigning the Drive Letter, be sure to also give a NAME - a
label - onto each partition.

Drive LETTERS may shift as you change operating systems, or as you move a
disk drive from one computer to another. But a label you assign will get
written to that partition on the disk platter and won't change like shifting
sand - unless you change it.

RC
-- --
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX

Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-2010)
Windows Live Mail 2012 (Build 16.4.3505.0912) in Win8 Pro


"Gordon" wrote in message
...

On Sun, 13 Jan 2013 14:38:47 -0500, Paul wrote:

BillW50 wrote:
On 1/13/2013 12:54 PM, Gordon wrote:
I just bought and installed Windows 8 on my older desktop after
replacing the hard drive with a new Western Digital 1TB drive. I
formatted this new drive, putting it in an external hard drive case
and using my other computer. The format went well and I partitioned
it into OS (C and Recovery (D then put it into the compute and
installed a new copy of Windows 8.

All went well and the whole computer seems to be operating okay but I
can not read the Recovery (D drive. It doesn't show on the Windows
Explorer as expected, along with OS (C.

I did find this partition when I opened Ctrl PnlDevice ManagerDisk
DrivesWDC WD10EARX-00N0YB0 ATA Device then selected the Volumes Tab
and clicked on the Populate button. The Volumes box shows both the OS
(C drive: 953517 MB and the Recovery Image: 350 MB but it doesn't
show any drive letter designation for the Recovery Image partition.
This same setup on my new HP Pavilion with Windows 8 pre-installed
show the Recovery Image (D as expected.

Why does the drive letter not show on the computer I just upgraded to
Windows 8 from Windows 7? How can I get it to assign drive letter D:
to this partition? Gordon

It is easy to tell you how to give the recovery partition a drive letter
called D. But what is that going to give you? There shouldn't be
anything in there that an user needs or wants in there. So whether a
drive letter show for it or not shouldn't even matter. It's sole purpose
is to recover (or repair) the original installed OS. And 350MB isn't
very big to be very helpful anyway. That sounds only large enough to
boot WinPE and that is all. And it probably asks you to insert the real
recovery CD/DVD discs for the process to continue.

UPDATE: I see Dave-UK told you how to assign a drive letter to the
recovery partition. Careful, you could make it unusable for recovery if
you do. It all depends on what kind of recovery software it is using.


While in Disk Management, also review the "description" shown for the
partitions. Possible values are "System", "Boot", "Pagefile". Those
are the values I've seen.

If the partition says "System", then it's a boot partition.
If the partition says "Boot", then it has the C: system files.
The labels are the opposite of what you'd think.

If there is anything stored in that partition at all, it is likely
boot files. In which case the label would be "System". For example,
perhaps something "BCD" related is stored in there. The one labeled
"System", likely has the boot flag set as well (since Windows
boot process, the MBR looks for the boot flag being assigned to
one partition, and booting then transfers to that partition).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boot_Co...iguration_Data

If the partition has none of those labels, and "System" and "Boot"
labels are assigned to the main (big) partition, maybe there's nothing
in there of interest at all.

If you assign a drive letter, or otherwise make the partition
visible, there is a remote possibility System Restore will see
it, and start tracking changes. I've read of the odd case,
where the partition "becomes full" or dialog boxes appear
"warning that a partition is nearly full", and the reason is because
System Restore got enabled. So while it's fun to make the
partition visible, that could be a side effect. You'd probably
want System Restore turned off for that partition. Unless,
perhaps, you regularly screw around with the BCD file, and
need a quick means to restore it.

Paul

Paul, I just checked and all seems to be in good shape. Disk
Management shows two partitions for Disc 0 Basic 939.51 GB Online.

The first one is shown as Recovery Image (D 350 MB NTFS Healthy
(System, Active, Primary Partition)

There is nothing written to this partition, yet, but it should be used
if/when I or the system does a restore or some other such.

The other partition is shown as OS (C 931.17 GB NTFS Healthy (Boot,
Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition)

Then it shows the CD-ROM 0 as DVD (E No Media. It seems that
everything is set up okay and should work well.

Gordon

On Sun, 13 Jan 2013 15:16:07 -0600, "R. C. White"
wrote:

Hi, Gordon.

In addition to assigning the Drive Letter, be sure to also give a NAME - a
label - onto each partition.

Drive LETTERS may shift as you change operating systems, or as you move a
disk drive from one computer to another. But a label you assign will get
written to that partition on the disk platter and won't change like shifting
sand - unless you change it.

RC
-- --
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX

Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-2010)
Windows Live Mail 2012 (Build 16.4.3505.0912) in Win8 Pro

Thanks, R.C. I did give it the name Recovery Image, which is the same
that my new HP Pavilion had for its drive D: partition. This name was
never dropped but the drive letter D: was, for some obscure reason.
It's all back in place and seems to be working well...for the time
being. Gordon

On Sun, 13 Jan 2013 12:54:27 -0600, Gordon wrote:

I just bought and installed Windows 8 on my older desktop after
replacing the hard drive with a new Western Digital 1TB drive. I
formatted this new drive, putting it in an external hard drive case
and using my other computer. The format went well and I partitioned
it into OS (C and Recovery (D then put it into the compute and
installed a new copy of Windows 8.

All went well and the whole computer seems to be operating okay but I
can not read the Recovery (D drive. It doesn't show on the Windows
Explorer as expected, along with OS (C.

I did find this partition when I opened Ctrl PnlDevice ManagerDisk
DrivesWDC WD10EARX-00N0YB0 ATA Device then selected the Volumes Tab
and clicked on the Populate button. The Volumes box shows both the OS
(C drive: 953517 MB and the Recovery Image: 350 MB but it doesn't
show any drive letter designation for the Recovery Image partition.
This same setup on my new HP Pavilion with Windows 8 pre-installed
show the Recovery Image (D as expected.

Why does the drive letter not show on the computer I just upgraded to
Windows 8 from Windows 7? How can I get it to assign drive letter D:
to this partition? Gordon

If you remove the drive letter from the recovery partition on every
computer (which I *always* do to prevent accidentally writing to it),
then the drives that get automatic letters will probably get the same
letters on each machine. Even if they don't, you can manually assign the
letters the way you want them, and they won't change.

Dave-UK showed you where to do that in his reply:
Message-ID:

Exception: on my dual boot machine, the drive I boot from becomes C: and
the other drive becomes D: ... I manage not to get mixed up.


--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

On Sun, 13 Jan 2013 15:14:15 -0800, "Gene E. Bloch"
wrote:

On Sun, 13 Jan 2013 12:54:27 -0600, Gordon wrote:

I just bought and installed Windows 8 on my older desktop after
replacing the hard drive with a new Western Digital 1TB drive. I
formatted this new drive, putting it in an external hard drive case
and using my other computer. The format went well and I partitioned
it into OS (C and Recovery (D then put it into the compute and
installed a new copy of Windows 8.

All went well and the whole computer seems to be operating okay but I
can not read the Recovery (D drive. It doesn't show on the Windows
Explorer as expected, along with OS (C.

I did find this partition when I opened Ctrl PnlDevice ManagerDisk
DrivesWDC WD10EARX-00N0YB0 ATA Device then selected the Volumes Tab
and clicked on the Populate button. The Volumes box shows both the OS
(C drive: 953517 MB and the Recovery Image: 350 MB but it doesn't
show any drive letter designation for the Recovery Image partition.
This same setup on my new HP Pavilion with Windows 8 pre-installed
show the Recovery Image (D as expected.

Why does the drive letter not show on the computer I just upgraded to
Windows 8 from Windows 7? How can I get it to assign drive letter D:
to this partition? Gordon

If you remove the drive letter from the recovery partition on every
computer (which I *always* do to prevent accidentally writing to it),
then the drives that get automatic letters will probably get the same
letters on each machine. Even if they don't, you can manually assign the
letters the way you want them, and they won't change.

Dave-UK showed you where to do that in his reply:
Message-ID:

Exception: on my dual boot machine, the drive I boot from becomes C: and
the other drive becomes D: ... I manage not to get mixed up.

Gene, I didn't know I could do this. I would have prefered to remove
the drive letter from the Recovery Image (D on my new HP Pavilion
and gone that route had I known I could do this without messing things
up. If this drive letter was not assigned to the Recovery Image
partition of the hard drive I could use it for some other drive such
as the DVD and kept both comptuers set up the same.

Are you sure I can go into Disk Management and delete the drive letter
from this Recovery Image partition without really messing things up? I
wonder why the new HP Pavilion was set up with drive D: assigned to
this Recovery Image partition is it isn't needed. Gordon

On Sun, 13 Jan 2013 17:35:17 -0600, Gordon wrote:

On Sun, 13 Jan 2013 15:14:15 -0800, "Gene E. Bloch"
wrote:

On Sun, 13 Jan 2013 12:54:27 -0600, Gordon wrote:

I just bought and installed Windows 8 on my older desktop after
replacing the hard drive with a new Western Digital 1TB drive. I
formatted this new drive, putting it in an external hard drive case
and using my other computer. The format went well and I partitioned
it into OS (C and Recovery (D then put it into the compute and
installed a new copy of Windows 8.

All went well and the whole computer seems to be operating okay but I
can not read the Recovery (D drive. It doesn't show on the Windows
Explorer as expected, along with OS (C.

I did find this partition when I opened Ctrl PnlDevice ManagerDisk
DrivesWDC WD10EARX-00N0YB0 ATA Device then selected the Volumes Tab
and clicked on the Populate button. The Volumes box shows both the OS
(C drive: 953517 MB and the Recovery Image: 350 MB but it doesn't
show any drive letter designation for the Recovery Image partition.
This same setup on my new HP Pavilion with Windows 8 pre-installed
show the Recovery Image (D as expected.

Why does the drive letter not show on the computer I just upgraded to
Windows 8 from Windows 7? How can I get it to assign drive letter D:
to this partition? Gordon

If you remove the drive letter from the recovery partition on every
computer (which I *always* do to prevent accidentally writing to it),
then the drives that get automatic letters will probably get the same
letters on each machine. Even if they don't, you can manually assign the
letters the way you want them, and they won't change.

Dave-UK showed you where to do that in his reply:
Message-ID:

Exception: on my dual boot machine, the drive I boot from becomes C: and
the other drive becomes D: ... I manage not to get mixed up.

Gene, I didn't know I could do this. I would have prefered to remove
the drive letter from the Recovery Image (D on my new HP Pavilion
and gone that route had I known I could do this without messing things
up. If this drive letter was not assigned to the Recovery Image
partition of the hard drive I could use it for some other drive such
as the DVD and kept both comptuers set up the same.

Are you sure I can go into Disk Management and delete the drive letter
from this Recovery Image partition without really messing things up? I
wonder why the new HP Pavilion was set up with drive D: assigned to
this Recovery Image partition is it isn't needed. Gordon

Yes. I do it on every computer that has assigned a drive letter to the
recovery partition without ever having a problem.

What I find hard is telling Windows to stop using my assigned drive
letter for a specific drive and go back to its own assignment, if you
ever want to do that. Maybe another poster knows how to do it.

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

On Sun, 13 Jan 2013 15:43:51 -0800, "Gene E. Bloch"
wrote:

On Sun, 13 Jan 2013 17:35:17 -0600, Gordon wrote:

On Sun, 13 Jan 2013 15:14:15 -0800, "Gene E. Bloch"
wrote:

On Sun, 13 Jan 2013 12:54:27 -0600, Gordon wrote:

I just bought and installed Windows 8 on my older desktop after
replacing the hard drive with a new Western Digital 1TB drive. I
formatted this new drive, putting it in an external hard drive case
and using my other computer. The format went well and I partitioned
it into OS (C and Recovery (D then put it into the compute and
installed a new copy of Windows 8.

All went well and the whole computer seems to be operating okay but I
can not read the Recovery (D drive. It doesn't show on the Windows
Explorer as expected, along with OS (C.

I did find this partition when I opened Ctrl PnlDevice ManagerDisk
DrivesWDC WD10EARX-00N0YB0 ATA Device then selected the Volumes Tab
and clicked on the Populate button. The Volumes box shows both the OS
(C drive: 953517 MB and the Recovery Image: 350 MB but it doesn't
show any drive letter designation for the Recovery Image partition.
This same setup on my new HP Pavilion with Windows 8 pre-installed
show the Recovery Image (D as expected.

Why does the drive letter not show on the computer I just upgraded to
Windows 8 from Windows 7? How can I get it to assign drive letter D:
to this partition? Gordon

If you remove the drive letter from the recovery partition on every
computer (which I *always* do to prevent accidentally writing to it),
then the drives that get automatic letters will probably get the same
letters on each machine. Even if they don't, you can manually assign the
letters the way you want them, and they won't change.

Dave-UK showed you where to do that in his reply:
Message-ID:

Exception: on my dual boot machine, the drive I boot from becomes C: and
the other drive becomes D: ... I manage not to get mixed up.

Gene, I didn't know I could do this. I would have prefered to remove
the drive letter from the Recovery Image (D on my new HP Pavilion
and gone that route had I known I could do this without messing things
up. If this drive letter was not assigned to the Recovery Image
partition of the hard drive I could use it for some other drive such
as the DVD and kept both comptuers set up the same.

Are you sure I can go into Disk Management and delete the drive letter
from this Recovery Image partition without really messing things up? I
wonder why the new HP Pavilion was set up with drive D: assigned to
this Recovery Image partition is it isn't needed. Gordon

Yes. I do it on every computer that has assigned a drive letter to the
recovery partition without ever having a problem.

What I find hard is telling Windows to stop using my assigned drive
letter for a specific drive and go back to its own assignment, if you
ever want to do that. Maybe another poster knows how to do it.

How long should I keep those Recovery Partitions? It seems that my HP
computer already has three of these...one with Drive (D assigned and
the other two with no drive letter. Do they get automatically deleted
after not being needed for a specified time? Gordon

On Sun, 13 Jan 2013 17:46:54 -0600, Gordon wrote:

On Sun, 13 Jan 2013 15:43:51 -0800, "Gene E. Bloch"
wrote:

On Sun, 13 Jan 2013 17:35:17 -0600, Gordon wrote:

On Sun, 13 Jan 2013 15:14:15 -0800, "Gene E. Bloch"
wrote:

On Sun, 13 Jan 2013 12:54:27 -0600, Gordon wrote:

I just bought and installed Windows 8 on my older desktop after
replacing the hard drive with a new Western Digital 1TB drive. I
formatted this new drive, putting it in an external hard drive case
and using my other computer. The format went well and I partitioned
it into OS (C and Recovery (D then put it into the compute and
installed a new copy of Windows 8.

All went well and the whole computer seems to be operating okay but I
can not read the Recovery (D drive. It doesn't show on the Windows
Explorer as expected, along with OS (C.

I did find this partition when I opened Ctrl PnlDevice ManagerDisk
DrivesWDC WD10EARX-00N0YB0 ATA Device then selected the Volumes Tab
and clicked on the Populate button. The Volumes box shows both the OS
(C drive: 953517 MB and the Recovery Image: 350 MB but it doesn't
show any drive letter designation for the Recovery Image partition.
This same setup on my new HP Pavilion with Windows 8 pre-installed
show the Recovery Image (D as expected.

Why does the drive letter not show on the computer I just upgraded to
Windows 8 from Windows 7? How can I get it to assign drive letter D:
to this partition? Gordon

If you remove the drive letter from the recovery partition on every
computer (which I *always* do to prevent accidentally writing to it),
then the drives that get automatic letters will probably get the same
letters on each machine. Even if they don't, you can manually assign the
letters the way you want them, and they won't change.

Dave-UK showed you where to do that in his reply:
Message-ID:

Exception: on my dual boot machine, the drive I boot from becomes C: and
the other drive becomes D: ... I manage not to get mixed up.

Gene, I didn't know I could do this. I would have prefered to remove
the drive letter from the Recovery Image (D on my new HP Pavilion
and gone that route had I known I could do this without messing things
up. If this drive letter was not assigned to the Recovery Image
partition of the hard drive I could use it for some other drive such
as the DVD and kept both comptuers set up the same.

Are you sure I can go into Disk Management and delete the drive letter
from this Recovery Image partition without really messing things up? I
wonder why the new HP Pavilion was set up with drive D: assigned to
this Recovery Image partition is it isn't needed. Gordon

Yes. I do it on every computer that has assigned a drive letter to the
recovery partition without ever having a problem.

What I find hard is telling Windows to stop using my assigned drive
letter for a specific drive and go back to its own assignment, if you
ever want to do that. Maybe another poster knows how to do it.

How long should I keep those Recovery Partitions? It seems that my HP
computer already has three of these...one with Drive (D assigned and
the other two with no drive letter. Do they get automatically deleted
after not being needed for a specified time? Gordon

How could they be automatically deleted? You need partition software to
do it (oversimplified).

They are small. Keep them.

OTOH, by the time you've made a lot of changes you might not want to go
back to the as-shipped state of your computer, so you really should be
making clone or image backups on a regular and frequent basis so you can
go back to yesterday, or at worst last week. Confessional note: I am not
as good about that as I'm asking you to be :-)

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)