Two System disks (and how can I have only one!)

[JamesAB]

Hello everyone,
I hope all of you had a Happy Christmas and may I wish you all a Happy New Year.

I have five hard drives on my PC. One (the C drive) is an SSD.
I find that both the C drive and my D drive (a 2Tb conventional HDD) are marked as system drives.

This was not a particular problem until today I came to do a Windows Image Backup.

Windows insists (quite rightly I am sure) in wanting to backup both the C and D drives as they are marked as system drives, but the backup drive does not have the space to accommodate both so I thought I would un-mark the D drive (which has only one partition) as a system drive. Easier said than done! After some deliberation, I decided that the thing to do was to make the partition on the D drive "inactive" and to see what result that had.

Much to my surprise (and grief) having done so I found that the PC would not boot up saying that there was no MBR!

Fortunately, using the Windows 10 repair disk, I was able to undo the change that I had made and make the D drive "active" again.

The thing is why didn't the PC boot from the C drive which is marked as the Boot drive and contains the operating system? The PC normally boots up in 43 secs which I presume indicates that it is booting from the SSD.

I don't know if making the D drive's single partition inactive, made it invisible to the PC. I am still faced with the problem that the D drive is marked as a system drive. Can I make it a "non-system drive and if so what would be the consequences as the PC appears to be relying on the D drive to boot up?

Thanks for any help,

Regards,

Jim

 

[Digerati]

I am trying to see where this marking of drives show "system" drive. I have two separate drives and neither says "system". Well, I take that back, I manually named one as "System". But both are labeled "Local Disk" for disk "types".

Where are you looking?

Did you by chance manually move some of your library folders to D drive?

 

[Tekno Venus]

Can you also send a screenshot of Disk Management please?

-Stephen

 

[JamesAB]

Thanks for your replies.
I attach a screen shot of my Disk Management.
I note that after my escapades earlier, the C drive no longer has the indication that it is a system drive, but the D drive (which is just used to store files) is still marked as a system drive.
I really am keen to know what has happened here!
If I go through the process of creating a windows system image, Windows is still showing that both C and D drives are system drives as shown in the second attachment.

Disk Management:


Thanks,

Jim

 

[xilolee]

Did you install any programs in d:?
Mine:

Read More:

Diskpart:

Read More:

Microsoft DiskPart version 10.0.16299.15

Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: XILO

DISKPART> sel dis 0

Disk 0 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> lis par

  Partition ###  Type              Size     Offset
  -------------  ----------------  -------  -------
  Partition 1    Recovery           400 MB  1024 KB
  Partition 2    System             299 MB   401 MB
  Partition 3    Reserved           128 MB   701 MB
  Partition 4    Primary             75 GB   829 MB
  Partition 5    Primary            139 GB    75 GB
  Partition 6    Primary            250 GB   215 GB

DISKPART> lis vol

  Volume ###  Ltr  Label        Fs     Type        Size     Status     Info
  ----------  ---  -----------  -----  ----------  -------  ---------  --------
  Volume 0     F                       DVD-ROM         0 B  No Media
  Volume 1     C                NTFS   Partition     75 GB  Healthy    Boot
  Volume 2     E   Data         NTFS   Partition    139 GB  Healthy
  Volume 3     D   DATA         NTFS   Partition    250 GB  Healthy
  Volume 4         RECOVERY     NTFS   Partition    400 MB  Healthy    Hidden
  Volume 5                      FAT32  Partition    299 MB  Healthy    System

 

[JamesAB]

Hi, Thank you for your reply.


I have found that there are three old programs on the HDD that contains the D and only the D drive. None of these have been used for several years and I will now delete them. I should explain that this HDD did contain the operating system which was transferred to a SSD drive at least three years ago. i have probably left something on the drive wich makes windows think that it is a system drive. I suppose I could wipe the drive and then reload the files from my back up but I'm not sure if that wouldn't just reproduce the same problem.

thanks.

Jim

 

[xilolee]

Read More:

Obviously, you try the following procedure at your own risk.

Before you try the following procedure:
- create a backup of your data in D:, and all your other disks.
- create a new system restore point.
- create a full system image (with aomei backupper standard or similar third party tools).

MAYBE (see I pictured it red and big?) you can solve the problem with diskpart:

• Open an elevated command prompt (right-click windows start, click command prompt (admin))
• Type (or copy/paste) diskpart, press enter (the command prompt should become diskpart>)
• Type list disk, press enter
• Type select disk 1, press enter
  I assume it's disk 1 because I saw your previous screenshot, but YOU MUST CHECK if D: is the disk 1 for real.
  Or if the disk 1 contains D:.
  You can use the commands list partition and/or list volume to see more details about the disk.
• Select the (incorrectly) active/system partition (in D:); type select partition 1, press enter
  If you have more than one partition in the disk, the list partition command should help you decide what partition you have to choose, because it should show system under the type column.
  (Obviously you shouldn't use that command in the disk/partition that contains the OS: usually C:)
• Type inactive, press enter
• Type exit, press enter (or brutally close the command prompt).

(I think it shouldn't be so risky if you select the correct drive...)

Ok, I re-read.

 

[xilolee]

Did you try to set as active the A: partition? (see the same disclaimer of liability in previous post)
(Did you set the letter for it? It should be hidden, I think)

 

[Digerati]

I note that after my escapades earlier, the C drive no longer has the indication that it is a system drive,

I think there is some confusion on your part. If you look at your C drive again, it clearly says it is the "Boot" drive.

 

[Rich-M]

I would backup and remove anything that matters on the "D" drive and then military or "Kill Disk" format it to make sure you really wipe it. There must be an MBR there that Windows sees and mistakenly tries to boot to as your "C" drive contains the MBR for this OS and you can clearly see it.

 

[JamesAB]

I note that after my escapades earlier, the C drive no longer has the indication that it is a system drive,

I think there is some confusion on your part. If you look at your C drive again, it clearly says it is the "Boot" drive.

It does say boot but it used to say "System" as well.

 

[JamesAB]

I certainly named the A partition - It seemed a good idea at the time! I'll hide it.

 

[JamesAB]

Initially both the C and D drives were reported as being "system" they are not labeled or named system but the term is included in the description of the drive given in Disk Management.

Now only the D drive is reported as "system." I don't know why C is not now described as system but it may be as a result of me making the D drive inactive and then reversing that action.

This whole thing is not a major problem except that it is not quite right and that irritates me because I must have done something wrong when I installed the SSD disk and transferred the o/s from the old C drive (the drive that is now the D drive) I thought I had erased all traces of the operating system but obviously I haven't. The consequences are simply that windows will not do a system back up without including the D drive.

I am concerned not to do anything that will cause loss of data from the D drive (Even though it is fully backed up.)

I may disconnect the D drive and see if the PC will boot from the C SSD. It may not because when I made the D drive inactive the PC would not boot up.

If I can get it to boot from C, then I will transfer all the data files from D to a spare drive. wipe D altogether and then transfer the data back.

Since I do have a system back up which includes the C and D drives and all other drives are also backed up. Maybe I should "let sleeping dogs lie?"

Thanks

Jim

 

[JamesAB]

Some more information:

I have been into Boot Manager and found that my system is booting from the D drive.

If I put the SSD C drive as number 1 in the order of boot priority, the PC will not boot up and it tells me to "Press f11 to run recovery" Pressing f11 actually does nothing.

So the issue is can I make the C drive bootable?

I'm sure this can be done.....? I'll investigate.

Jim

P.S. Happy new Year!

 

[JamesAB]

Is this as simple as just using a partition manager (I use EaseUS) to rebuild the MBR?

Jim

 

[Rich-M]

Here is the easiest way:
Restore, Fix, Repair Master Boot Record (MBR) in Windows

 

[JamesAB]

My PC is up and running. It seems to be booting up from the D drive and then opening the O/S on the C drive. I want it to boot from the C drive.

Given that the PC is up and running, can I just open the command prompt and proceed to fix the MBR on the C drive as your link shows.?

I suspect it might be difficult to get it to operate on the C drive since it has booted from the D drive.

Thanks

Jim

 

[JamesAB]

I tried rebuilding the MBR on C with EaseUS PM which apparently was successful. In the BIOS I changed the boot priority to boot from the C drive. Boot up failed with the message no BootMGR. I changed the priority to boot from D and the PC booted ok.

 

[JamesAB]

I don't know if this is of any consequence but there is under C: called BOOT and a folder under D called boot. The latter has different contents than that under C. It seems they are for the use of many different languages.

 

[Rich-M]

That is why I told you to use Kill Disk to remove the MBR from "D" drive where I knew it had to be. Then and only then you can repair the MBR on "C" drive.