No More C: Drive

[John700]

So, I re-installed Windows 7, in order to achieve this goal:
- Switch the C and the D drive
- format the old C drive

During install (run from non-bootable USB device), I didn't have the option to format any drive, although he did list both drives. I just installed on the correct drive, and that is OK.

Now, the bootable Windows drive now is my D drive.
And, the non-bootable drive now is my C drive.

I could switch my C drive to be another drive (G drive). All OK.
Restarted computer, all OK.
Note : there is currently no C drive, only D and G.

I tried to format the G drive (which failed), but that is another issue.
Then I tried to switch my D drive to the C drive.
Windows (diskmgmt.msc) allows me to select C drive, but it ends with error:

Virtual Disk Manager
The parameter is incorrect.

And that is where the fun stops. So, what's next ? How do I get my bootable drive be the C drive ?

 

[TrainableMan]

Basically everything in your registry now associates with your programs & files being on the D: drive so it wouldn't be as simple as changing the drive designation from D: to C: in diskmgmt.

I think the easiest thing to do would be to shut down & remove/unplug the Old C: drive & then reinstall Windows. Note you can also use the advanced options before the install if you wish (that is how you would format the drive)

 

[John700]

I've found a solution to it, but it would indeed have probably be the easiest to physically unplug the old C drive, during Windows re-install.

There's several things that went wrong, but one of them is that although the new drive has the OS (Windows, Program Files and all), the OLD drive is some way still part of the whole boot process. Diskmgmt stated that the NEW drive was the boot drive, but when I put the OLD drive as inactive, I couldn't boot anymore.

And that showed part of the problem: the old drive was still part of the Windows system. In Diskmgmt that was made visual by the fact that the "System" option remained present in that old drive. I never stated that drive should be, so it must be because the Windows installer found a disk that was, and continued with that idea.

In that context, I indeed could not format my old drive, cause he considered this as a System disk. Also Diskpart could not do certain actions on it!

What I did was re-install Windows, and I noted that indeed the "special" options on each disk were listed when you click on each disk, when the Windows installer presents them. Maybe it didn't on the earlier install, maybe it did. But, you must first click on that to get the Advanced options, and then you can format. Then I formatted my old drive, and re-installed Windows on the new drive.

After that I have a C and a D drive by default, where C is the Windows disk (and it also is the new disk). I only have some weird partitions I can't get rid of on the old drive, but that is something else. I though that when you Format a drive, all partitions are gone, but that seems not true. One of those partitions is listed as Hidden.

 

[TrainableMan]

Yeah the bootsector was probably still on old C. If you unplugged the old C: & booted to the win7 USB drive it could have put a bootsector on the new drive but I still would worry about all the references to D: in the registry, SO it's better you reinstalled.

Formatting is something done within a partition so if there are other partitions on the drive those are not affected. To recover that space you need to drop the partitions and then create a single partition and then format that.