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Recovery Imagbe (D:)



 
 
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  #16  
Old January 14th 13, 01:09 AM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-8
Gene E. Bloch[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 7,485
Default Recovery Imagbe (D:)

On Sun, 13 Jan 2013 16:05:15 -0800, Gene E. Bloch wrote:

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 :-)


I left out one important reason to have the recovery partition. When you
want to give your computer away, you need that to get rid of your
personal information and personal software. You also need eraser
software to clear leftover (but findable) stuff out of the dusty corners
of your drive, but that's another story.

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)
Ads
  #17  
Old January 14th 13, 01:13 AM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-8
BillW50
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 5,556
Default Recovery Imagbe (D:)

On 1/13/2013 6:05 PM, Gene E. Bloch wrote:
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 :-)


I dunno Gene... I think you did quite well actually. Want to take a shot
for the cure of cancer or the meaning of life or something? Heck, I
think you might be on to something. ;-)

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - Thunderbird v12
Centrino Core2 Duo T7400 2.16 GHz - 4GB - Windows 8
  #18  
Old January 14th 13, 01:49 AM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-8
..winston
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 266
Default Recovery Imagbe (D:)

Hello Gordon,
I'm going to explain this a bit differently than others.

Earlier you wrote that you formatted then partitioned the drive
qp
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.
/qp
- not possible..one formats the drive after creating a partition.

You later wrote...
qp
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)
/qp

When you installed Windows 8 it chose to use (the two partitions) or recreate the two partitions.
1. A System Reserved Partition (System Volume) - Windows boot files, and Windows repair/refresh utilities.
2. A Boot Partition (Boot Volume) - Windows 8 installed operating system

Windows 8 System Reserved Partition (1) ***is*** 350 MB (unlike Vista which created a 100MB and Win7 which created a 200 MB System
Reserved partition)

The System Reserved (1) does not by default have a drive letter, nor does it need a driver letter or a name.

Windows 8 Settings (PC Settings/General tab) has three options:
Refresh your PC; Remove everything and reinstall Windows; and Advanced Startup
- to facilitate the above Windows 8 will use the System Reserved(1) and if necessary prompt for the installation DVD or any
external disks or drives [but not (1) or (2)] created/setup by Win8 included utilities (File Recovery or File History)

Another poster mentioned that the Recovery partition depends upon the type of Recovery software
- that isn't necessarily entirely accurate since without clarification that could be interpreted as 3rd party software external to
Windows
- thus it may have nothing to do with what kind of recovery software you are using. System Reserved (the partition you didn't need
to assign a drive letter to) is for Windows 8 use and best left alone .....i.e. no Drive letter. Likewise it was not necessary to
name it Recovery since Windows 8 will identify it as System Reserved.


--
....winston
msft mvp


"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

  #19  
Old January 14th 13, 04:44 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-8
R. C. White
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,058
Default Recovery Imagbe (D:)

Hi, Gordon.

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.


The "obscure reason" is what I explained earlier: The drive LETTER was
assigned by the operating system (Windows) and changes when you boot into a
different OS and might get changed in other ways. The NAME was written to
the disk platter by the disk controller (and here we get out of my depth)
and will not change, no matter which OS is reading that disk, even if the
disk hardware is moved to a different computer. Windows will let you change
that name by writing a new one in its place. (Even MS-DOS would let us do
that 30 years ago.)

You COULD have made "D:" a part of the partition's NAME - but that is not a
smart thing to do. If you had named that partition "Recovery Image (D"
(note the inclusion of D: inside the quotation marks) and wrote that name to
the disk, and then added another disk volume - such as a USB flash drive -
you might have wound up with something like this:
C: Windows
D: Flash drive
(no letter) Recovery Image (D

The flash drive would have been assigned the letter D: by Windows. If you
looked at D: in Windows Explorer (also known as "Computer" or "File
Explorer") you would see the contents of the flash drive - NOT the recovery
volume. As you can see, this is a way to get a lot more confused than we
are already! Heck, we might even use Disk Management to assign a letter -
E:? - to that recovery volume. Then our Computer listing might show up as:
C: Windows
D: Flash drive
E: Recovery Image (D

How's that for confusing? That's why we must never include a drive LETTER
as part of a partition NAME.

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 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



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

  #20  
Old January 14th 13, 05:09 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-8
Gordon
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 309
Default Recovery Imagbe (D:)

On Mon, 14 Jan 2013 09:44:16 -0600, "R. C. White"
wrote:

Hi, Gordon.

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.


The "obscure reason" is what I explained earlier: The drive LETTER was
assigned by the operating system (Windows) and changes when you boot into a
different OS and might get changed in other ways. The NAME was written to
the disk platter by the disk controller (and here we get out of my depth)
and will not change, no matter which OS is reading that disk, even if the
disk hardware is moved to a different computer. Windows will let you change
that name by writing a new one in its place. (Even MS-DOS would let us do
that 30 years ago.)

You COULD have made "D:" a part of the partition's NAME - but that is not a
smart thing to do. If you had named that partition "Recovery Image (D"
(note the inclusion of D: inside the quotation marks) and wrote that name to
the disk, and then added another disk volume - such as a USB flash drive -
you might have wound up with something like this:
C: Windows
D: Flash drive
(no letter) Recovery Image (D

The flash drive would have been assigned the letter D: by Windows. If you
looked at D: in Windows Explorer (also known as "Computer" or "File
Explorer") you would see the contents of the flash drive - NOT the recovery
volume. As you can see, this is a way to get a lot more confused than we
are already! Heck, we might even use Disk Management to assign a letter -
E:? - to that recovery volume. Then our Computer listing might show up as:
C: Windows
D: Flash drive
E: Recovery Image (D

How's that for confusing? That's why we must never include a drive LETTER
as part of a partition NAME.

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 think I've gotten this all straightened out. I deleted
the drive letter designation and all seems to be working well. There
are now four recovery partitions on this hard drive and none of them
have a drive letter. Gordon

"Gordon" wrote in message
.. .

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



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

  #21  
Old January 14th 13, 07:31 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-8
Gene E. Bloch[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 7,485
Default Recovery Imagbe (D:)

On Sun, 13 Jan 2013 18:13:20 -0600, BillW50 wrote:

On 1/13/2013 6:05 PM, Gene E. Bloch wrote:
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 :-)


I dunno Gene... I think you did quite well actually. Want to take a shot
for the cure of cancer or the meaning of life or something? Heck, I
think you might be on to something. ;-)


No, I meant I am not as religious about backing up as my advice above
would seem to imply.

I thought my *explanation* was good, but I *am* a bit of an egotist :-)

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)
  #22  
Old January 14th 13, 08:00 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-8
Gordon
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 309
Default Recovery Imagbe (D:)

On Mon, 14 Jan 2013 10:31:49 -0800, "Gene E. Bloch"
wrote:

On Sun, 13 Jan 2013 18:13:20 -0600, BillW50 wrote:

On 1/13/2013 6:05 PM, Gene E. Bloch wrote:
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 :-)


I dunno Gene... I think you did quite well actually. Want to take a shot
for the cure of cancer or the meaning of life or something? Heck, I
think you might be on to something. ;-)


No, I meant I am not as religious about backing up as my advice above
would seem to imply.

I thought my *explanation* was good, but I *am* a bit of an egotist :-)

I am trying to get things set up for a more reliable and regular
back-up process onto external hard drives. I have three Western
Digital 500 MB hard drives inside DYNEX drive boxes and I have been
making copies of the entire Libraries Folder once a week. I keep one
of these external hard drives outside in a storage barn, one inside
near my computer and one in my bank safe box. I make a new back-up
then move that external hard drive to the bank vault and take the bank
vault external hard drive to the storage barn, then brint the one that
has been in the storage barn inside. I let it slowly warm up to room
temperature before removing it from a large coffee can that I keep it
in, then when the time comes I repeat the above process, always
keeping the most recent back-up in my bank safe box. Gordon
  #23  
Old January 14th 13, 08:03 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-8
Gordon
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 309
Default Recovery Imagbe (D:)

On Sun, 13 Jan 2013 19:49:03 -0500, "..winston"
wrote:

Hello Gordon,
I'm going to explain this a bit differently than others.

Earlier you wrote that you formatted then partitioned the drive
qp
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.
/qp
- not possible..one formats the drive after creating a partition.

You later wrote...
qp
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)
/qp

When you installed Windows 8 it chose to use (the two partitions) or recreate the two partitions.
1. A System Reserved Partition (System Volume) - Windows boot files, and Windows repair/refresh utilities.
2. A Boot Partition (Boot Volume) - Windows 8 installed operating system

Windows 8 System Reserved Partition (1) ***is*** 350 MB (unlike Vista which created a 100MB and Win7 which created a 200 MB System
Reserved partition)

The System Reserved (1) does not by default have a drive letter, nor does it need a driver letter or a name.

Windows 8 Settings (PC Settings/General tab) has three options:
Refresh your PC; Remove everything and reinstall Windows; and Advanced Startup
- to facilitate the above Windows 8 will use the System Reserved(1) and if necessary prompt for the installation DVD or any
external disks or drives [but not (1) or (2)] created/setup by Win8 included utilities (File Recovery or File History)

Another poster mentioned that the Recovery partition depends upon the type of Recovery software
- that isn't necessarily entirely accurate since without clarification that could be interpreted as 3rd party software external to
Windows
- thus it may have nothing to do with what kind of recovery software you are using. System Reserved (the partition you didn't need
to assign a drive letter to) is for Windows 8 use and best left alone ....i.e. no Drive letter. Likewise it was not necessary to
name it Recovery since Windows 8 will identify it as System Reserved.

Winston, this is some very good information. I may have done some of
this incorrectly and this may be the reason I had some problems. I've
printed your message and will keep it with my computer setup stuff in
a plastic storage box. Gordon
  #24  
Old January 14th 13, 08:48 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-8
Gene E. Bloch[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 7,485
Default Recovery Imagbe (D:)

On Mon, 14 Jan 2013 13:00:40 -0600, Gordon wrote:

I am trying to get things set up for a more reliable and regular
back-up process onto external hard drives. I have three Western
Digital 500 MB hard drives inside DYNEX drive boxes and I have been
making copies of the entire Libraries Folder once a week. I keep one
of these external hard drives outside in a storage barn, one inside
near my computer and one in my bank safe box. I make a new back-up
then move that external hard drive to the bank vault and take the bank
vault external hard drive to the storage barn, then brint the one that
has been in the storage barn inside. I let it slowly warm up to room
temperature before removing it from a large coffee can that I keep it
in, then when the time comes I repeat the above process, always
keeping the most recent back-up in my bank safe box. Gordon


Looks good. Letting the drive warm up to room temperature before opening
the can is *very* good practice.

But we have three problems here.

1. Our coffee comes in sacks.

2. No safety deposit box.

3. We're not as responsible as you are.

The third is unfortunately true, not a joke.

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)
  #25  
Old January 14th 13, 09:36 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-8
Paul
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 18,275
Default Recovery Imagbe (D:)

Gordon wrote:
On Mon, 14 Jan 2013 10:31:49 -0800, "Gene E. Bloch"
wrote:

On Sun, 13 Jan 2013 18:13:20 -0600, BillW50 wrote:

On 1/13/2013 6:05 PM, Gene E. Bloch wrote:
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 :-)
I dunno Gene... I think you did quite well actually. Want to take a shot
for the cure of cancer or the meaning of life or something? Heck, I
think you might be on to something. ;-)

No, I meant I am not as religious about backing up as my advice above
would seem to imply.

I thought my *explanation* was good, but I *am* a bit of an egotist :-)

I am trying to get things set up for a more reliable and regular
back-up process onto external hard drives. I have three Western
Digital 500 MB hard drives inside DYNEX drive boxes and I have been
making copies of the entire Libraries Folder once a week. I keep one
of these external hard drives outside in a storage barn, one inside
near my computer and one in my bank safe box. I make a new back-up
then move that external hard drive to the bank vault and take the bank
vault external hard drive to the storage barn, then brint the one that
has been in the storage barn inside. I let it slowly warm up to room
temperature before removing it from a large coffee can that I keep it
in, then when the time comes I repeat the above process, always
keeping the most recent back-up in my bank safe box. Gordon


Is it possible those Recovery Partitions are being created by
an OS "repair procedure" ? Are you having problems booting
the OS, and after every "repair" attempt, a Recovery Partition
shows up ? Is that what is happening ?

If that were the case, there might be something slightly wrong
with the boot files on C:, and the repair process is copying
new boot files to a separate partition it creates. Chances
are, it'll have to stop creating new partitions, when it runs
out of Primary Partition entries in the MBR. So three of them
is likely the max you'll see. It's going to have to recycle
the ones it already created, if a repair attempt is made
in the future.

Very curious. My Windows 8 exists on a single partition,
with no help from any other partitions.

Paul
  #26  
Old January 14th 13, 09:50 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-8
Gordon
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 309
Default Recovery Imagbe (D:)

On Mon, 14 Jan 2013 11:48:00 -0800, "Gene E. Bloch"
wrote:

On Mon, 14 Jan 2013 13:00:40 -0600, Gordon wrote:

I am trying to get things set up for a more reliable and regular
back-up process onto external hard drives. I have three Western
Digital 500 MB hard drives inside DYNEX drive boxes and I have been
making copies of the entire Libraries Folder once a week. I keep one
of these external hard drives outside in a storage barn, one inside
near my computer and one in my bank safe box. I make a new back-up
then move that external hard drive to the bank vault and take the bank
vault external hard drive to the storage barn, then brint the one that
has been in the storage barn inside. I let it slowly warm up to room
temperature before removing it from a large coffee can that I keep it
in, then when the time comes I repeat the above process, always
keeping the most recent back-up in my bank safe box. Gordon


Looks good. Letting the drive warm up to room temperature before opening
the can is *very* good practice.

But we have three problems here.

1. Our coffee comes in sacks.

My wife works at the local Post Office and their coffee cans are those
plastic 46 oz. size that are just right for storing these DYNEX
external hard drives in. They also provide bug and dust protection
when I put one of them in the back yard storage barn.

2. No safety deposit box.

I keep all my important family and business records in my save deposit
box at my FAA Credit Union Bank. Very handy and very safe from
anything like a house fire, tornado, etc.

3. We're not as responsible as you are.

The third is unfortunately true, not a joke.

Okay, I won't show this to my wife and let her laugh at your
"irresponsibilities"...promise. Gordon
  #27  
Old January 14th 13, 10:02 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-8
Gordon
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 309
Default Recovery Imagbe (D:)

On Mon, 14 Jan 2013 15:36:23 -0500, Paul wrote:

Gordon wrote:
On Mon, 14 Jan 2013 10:31:49 -0800, "Gene E. Bloch"
wrote:

On Sun, 13 Jan 2013 18:13:20 -0600, BillW50 wrote:

On 1/13/2013 6:05 PM, Gene E. Bloch wrote:
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 :-)
I dunno Gene... I think you did quite well actually. Want to take a shot
for the cure of cancer or the meaning of life or something? Heck, I
think you might be on to something. ;-)
No, I meant I am not as religious about backing up as my advice above
would seem to imply.

I thought my *explanation* was good, but I *am* a bit of an egotist :-)

I am trying to get things set up for a more reliable and regular
back-up process onto external hard drives. I have three Western
Digital 500 MB hard drives inside DYNEX drive boxes and I have been
making copies of the entire Libraries Folder once a week. I keep one
of these external hard drives outside in a storage barn, one inside
near my computer and one in my bank safe box. I make a new back-up
then move that external hard drive to the bank vault and take the bank
vault external hard drive to the storage barn, then brint the one that
has been in the storage barn inside. I let it slowly warm up to room
temperature before removing it from a large coffee can that I keep it
in, then when the time comes I repeat the above process, always
keeping the most recent back-up in my bank safe box. Gordon


Is it possible those Recovery Partitions are being created by
an OS "repair procedure" ? Are you having problems booting
the OS, and after every "repair" attempt, a Recovery Partition
shows up ? Is that what is happening ?

The Recovery Image partition with the drive letter D: assigned was set
up by HP and I can not modify it, or remove the drive letter. I am
guessing it has some waranty information in it that they don't want me
to mess with.

The original partition is labeled;
OS (C 910.34 GB Healthy (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump Primary
Partition)

There are two more partitions that have been set up automatically
since I bought this computer in early November. These are labeled;
Healthy (Recovery Partition) 1023 MB
Healthy (EFI System Partition) 360 MB
Neither of these have a drive letter assigned

If that were the case, there might be something slightly wrong
with the boot files on C:, and the repair process is copying
new boot files to a separate partition it creates. Chances
are, it'll have to stop creating new partitions, when it runs
out of Primary Partition entries in the MBR. So three of them
is likely the max you'll see. It's going to have to recycle
the ones it already created, if a repair attempt is made
in the future.

Very curious. My Windows 8 exists on a single partition,
with no help from any other partitions.

Paul

As I mentioned before, I'm inclined to think this (C partition was
set up by HP as they pre-installed Windows 8. It probalby contains
some waranty related information that I am not supposed to have access
to or modify in any way. Gordon
  #28  
Old January 14th 13, 10:43 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-8
Gene E. Bloch[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 7,485
Default Recovery Imagbe (D:)

On Mon, 14 Jan 2013 14:50:10 -0600, Gordon wrote:

On Mon, 14 Jan 2013 11:48:00 -0800, "Gene E. Bloch"
wrote:

On Mon, 14 Jan 2013 13:00:40 -0600, Gordon wrote:

I am trying to get things set up for a more reliable and regular
back-up process onto external hard drives. I have three Western
Digital 500 MB hard drives inside DYNEX drive boxes and I have been
making copies of the entire Libraries Folder once a week. I keep one
of these external hard drives outside in a storage barn, one inside
near my computer and one in my bank safe box. I make a new back-up
then move that external hard drive to the bank vault and take the bank
vault external hard drive to the storage barn, then brint the one that
has been in the storage barn inside. I let it slowly warm up to room
temperature before removing it from a large coffee can that I keep it
in, then when the time comes I repeat the above process, always
keeping the most recent back-up in my bank safe box. Gordon


Looks good. Letting the drive warm up to room temperature before opening
the can is *very* good practice.

But we have three problems here.

1. Our coffee comes in sacks.

My wife works at the local Post Office and their coffee cans are those
plastic 46 oz. size that are just right for storing these DYNEX
external hard drives in. They also provide bug and dust protection
when I put one of them in the back yard storage barn.

2. No safety deposit box.

I keep all my important family and business records in my save deposit
box at my FAA Credit Union Bank. Very handy and very safe from
anything like a house fire, tornado, etc.

3. We're not as responsible as you are.

The third is unfortunately true, not a joke.

Okay, I won't show this to my wife and let her laugh at your
"irresponsibilities"...promise. Gordon


Oh, go ahead. She could use a joke :-)

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)
  #29  
Old January 14th 13, 11:49 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-8
Gordon
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 309
Default Recovery Imagbe (D:)

On Mon, 14 Jan 2013 13:43:13 -0800, "Gene E. Bloch"
wrote:

On Mon, 14 Jan 2013 14:50:10 -0600, Gordon wrote:

On Mon, 14 Jan 2013 11:48:00 -0800, "Gene E. Bloch"
wrote:

On Mon, 14 Jan 2013 13:00:40 -0600, Gordon wrote:

I am trying to get things set up for a more reliable and regular
back-up process onto external hard drives. I have three Western
Digital 500 MB hard drives inside DYNEX drive boxes and I have been
making copies of the entire Libraries Folder once a week. I keep one
of these external hard drives outside in a storage barn, one inside
near my computer and one in my bank safe box. I make a new back-up
then move that external hard drive to the bank vault and take the bank
vault external hard drive to the storage barn, then brint the one that
has been in the storage barn inside. I let it slowly warm up to room
temperature before removing it from a large coffee can that I keep it
in, then when the time comes I repeat the above process, always
keeping the most recent back-up in my bank safe box. Gordon

Looks good. Letting the drive warm up to room temperature before opening
the can is *very* good practice.

But we have three problems here.

1. Our coffee comes in sacks.

My wife works at the local Post Office and their coffee cans are those
plastic 46 oz. size that are just right for storing these DYNEX
external hard drives in. They also provide bug and dust protection
when I put one of them in the back yard storage barn.

2. No safety deposit box.

I keep all my important family and business records in my save deposit
box at my FAA Credit Union Bank. Very handy and very safe from
anything like a house fire, tornado, etc.

3. We're not as responsible as you are.

The third is unfortunately true, not a joke.

Okay, I won't show this to my wife and let her laugh at your
"irresponsibilities"...promise. Gordon


Oh, go ahead. She could use a joke :-)

I'd better not! I already provide her with plenty of this kind of
stuff to laugh at. She might go completely hysterical if I added you
to her list. ;-) Gordon
  #30  
Old January 15th 13, 03:29 AM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-8
R. C. White
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,058
Default Recovery Imagbe (D:)

Hi, Gordon.

There are now four recovery partitions on this hard drive and none of them
have a drive letter.


Well, "drive" letters are for us humans. The computer doesn't need them -
as you see.

The computer actually uses Disk NUMBERS, starting with zero, and to
partition NUMBERS, starting with one on each disk. Something within the
file system converts "Disk 0, Partition 2" to "Drive E:" for our benefit and
then converts back the other way when required. Disk Management's Graphical
Display shows us these relationships.

If you want to get deeper into this, open an elevated Command Prompt window
and run the utility DiskPart.exe - but be careful; like any powerful
utility, it can do more harm than good when mishandled. It's safer for us
novices to use Disk Management, which is the user-friendly GUI for the real
DiskPart, which normally stays hidden "behind the curtain" and we never see
it. We have to use Disk numbers and Partition numbers when working with
DiskPart. It will display "drive" letters for our benefit, but is just as
happy with unlettered partitions like your four recovery partitions.

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 Mon, 14 Jan 2013 09:44:16 -0600, "R. C. White"
wrote:

Hi, Gordon.

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.


The "obscure reason" is what I explained earlier: The drive LETTER was
assigned by the operating system (Windows) and changes when you boot into a
different OS and might get changed in other ways. The NAME was written to
the disk platter by the disk controller (and here we get out of my depth)
and will not change, no matter which OS is reading that disk, even if the
disk hardware is moved to a different computer. Windows will let you
change
that name by writing a new one in its place. (Even MS-DOS would let us do
that 30 years ago.)

You COULD have made "D:" a part of the partition's NAME - but that is not a
smart thing to do. If you had named that partition "Recovery Image (D"
(note the inclusion of D: inside the quotation marks) and wrote that name
to
the disk, and then added another disk volume - such as a USB flash drive -
you might have wound up with something like this:
C: Windows
D: Flash drive
(no letter) Recovery Image (D

The flash drive would have been assigned the letter D: by Windows. If you
looked at D: in Windows Explorer (also known as "Computer" or "File
Explorer") you would see the contents of the flash drive - NOT the recovery
volume. As you can see, this is a way to get a lot more confused than we
are already! Heck, we might even use Disk Management to assign a letter -
E:? - to that recovery volume. Then our Computer listing might show up as:
C: Windows
D: Flash drive
E: Recovery Image (D

How's that for confusing? That's why we must never include a drive LETTER
as part of a partition NAME.

RC



Thanks, R.C. I think I've gotten this all straightened out. I deleted
the drive letter designation and all seems to be working well. There
are now four recovery partitions on this hard drive and none of them
have a drive letter. Gordon

"Gordon" wrote in message
.. .

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



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


 




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