Move "System" from D to C?

[Nagisan]

For some odd reason, my D drive (secondary drive) is labeled as my "System" drive in Disk Management, but my system is actually on my C drive. Is there any way to move that System label from my D drive to my C drive without having to reinstall? I want to start doing a weekly system image, but I do not have enough space to image 117GB + 465GB, but because my D drive (465GB) is labeled with "System", I must image it if I want to image my actual system.

Any solution without reinstalling?

Pic below shows my drives, most notably the System label on Disk 1 (D) that I want to move to Disk 2 ?....oddly enough, Disk 2 is located on controller 0 channel 0, while Disk 1 is controller 0 channel 1.....not sure why they are labeled that way, it's backwards from how they are actually connected.

EDIT: This may be in the wrong place, figured it would make more sense to post it in the windows section since it is a windows only issue, but it could also work in the technical support section.....please move it (mods) if you feel it would fit better in the technical support section.

[Hum]

I've fixed this by unhooking all but my system drive, then booting up.

Windows relabels D, E, etc, to C:\

You can shut down, and add back drives one-by-one, in the order you want them.

[Nagisan]

The problem is when I boot up, my system is labeled C, Disk Management is the ONLY thing that shows "System" on my D drive......when I boot up, C is Disk 2, which is my system drive, D is a secondary drive I have, but for some reason, Disk Manager labeled D as my "system" drive when it clearly is not.

[+BudMan MVC]

I think your mis understanding what system means. This is where the boot folder, bcd, bootmgr, etc. files should be. Does not mean that is where your windows files are.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-vista/What-are-system-partitions-and-boot-partitions

What version of windows do you have, normally a 100MB partition is where system resides on a clean system - how did you install your os?

example

So if you do as suggested and pull the d, does your computer still boot?

You have 2 partitions set as Active?? Did you have a dual boot setup? Where did this other D drive come from?

[Nagisan]

I think your mis understanding what system means. This is where the boot folder, bcd, bootmgr, etc. files should be. Does not mean that is where your windows files are.

http://windows.micro...boot-partitions

What version of windows do you have, normally a 100MB partition is where system resides on a clean system - how did you install your os?

I understand what system means in this case (or rather I read about it earlier), but if my boot folder is there, then how come C is labeled as Boot? Because its the actual drive that the system is currently booted on?

As for installing, it was a fresh install, I formatted my C drive and installed Windows (7 to be exact) on it. I think what happened is I created a partition on the drive instead of leaving it unallocated after the format and letting Windows create the partitions.

So if you do as suggested and pull the d, does your computer still boot?

You have 2 partitions set as Active?? Did you have a dual boot setup? Where did this other D drive come from?

I was reading around testing things out, D was originally my "System, Active" drive, but I clicked my C drive and set it as an Active drive hoping it would remove active from D, as you can see that did not work how I hoped. I have never ran dual boot on my system, but after I marked C as the active drive I had major boot problems. The only way I fixed it was to physically swap the locations of C and D on my SATA ports then run Windows Boot Repair (the automated thing) from the Windows DVD. Before I physically swapped them, Windows wouldn't even detect the system on my C drive as a version the DVD could recover and I couldn't fix the boot issues. So I'm willing to bet if I remove D, I wont be able to boot.

As for where D came from, it's an old drive I have used for years to store data I didn't need on my system drive (documents, downloads, etc). Never used it as a primary drive for my system, it's always been storage.

So, any way to move the system files (boot, etc) back to my C drive, or would I have to reinstall?

[Hum]

^ You don't need to Reinstall a thing.

Simply boot up with your Operating System drive connected, only.

Windows will ordain it as C.

After that, you can shut down, and add drives in the order you want them to be.

If you get any grumbles from Windows, you can go to Disk Management and Reletter the drives, except C.

And you can Delete any old Windows installs that you do not want.

[+BudMan MVC]

"The only way I fixed it was to physically swap the locations of C and D on my SATA ports then run Windows Boot Repair (the automated thing"

Yeah seems you really screwed the pooch here.. You really can have only 1 active set.

So you moved sata ports??

Take a look at your bcd..

example

C:\Windows\system32>bcdedit

Windows Boot Manager

--------------------

identifier {bootmgr}

device partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume1

description Windows Boot Manager

locale en-US

inherit {globalsettings}

default {current}

resumeobject {7a6000c3-db68-11e0-8e00-98e87cc48183}

displayorder {current}

toolsdisplayorder {memdiag}

timeout 5

displaybootmenu Yes

Windows Boot Loader

-------------------

identifier {current}

device partition=C:

path \Windows\system32\winload.exe

description Windows 7

locale en-US

inherit {bootloadersettings}

recoverysequence {7a6000c5-db68-11e0-8e00-98e87cc48183}

recoveryenabled Yes

osdevice partition=C:

systemroot \Windows

resumeobject {7a6000c3-db68-11e0-8e00-98e87cc48183}

nx OptIn

C:\Windows\system32>

Normally Disk 0 is the system and boot disk (ie windows installed here) Yours is E: an C is on disk 2, not a normal type setup.

[Noir Angel]

I think the long and short of this is that if your system is functioning normally you have nothing to worry about. You probably just have a bootloader left over on the other drive. The only easy way to absolve that problem is to move all the data, format the drive and then put the data back.

[Nagisan]

Yeah seems you really screwed the pooch here.. You really can have only 1 active set.

So you moved sata ports??

Before I changed anything at all, D and I guess E both had Active, but neither of them contain my system (where windows is installed). C is the drive I have my system installed on (windows files), but D is labeled as my "System" drive in disk management.

Normally Disk 0 is the system and boot disk (ie windows installed here) Yours is E: an C is on disk 2, not a normal type setup.

That's my point, I don't know why Disk 0 is my D drive, C is controller 0 channel 0, meaning C is the first drive my bios sees. No clue why Windows wants to label it different than the Bios. And no, my boot disk (ie windows installed here) is not E, it's C.

Is there any way to move my boot manager to my C drive instead of the D drive it is currently on without reinstalling my system?

[+BudMan MVC]

Yeah you can always just edit bcd.

But simple way might be just to pull the D and then run startup repair from your media.

It's been so long since I have played with how windows determines disk 0, disk 1, etc I would have to do a bit a research. It normally matches up with your controller.

Did you change your boot order in your bios?

edit: Take a read here

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/937251

The disk drive numbers may not correspond as expected to the SATA channel numbers when you set up Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, or Windows 7 on a computer that has multiple SATA or RAID disks

[Nagisan]

Ever since I installed the system, my boot order has been HDD -> CD -> USB.....HDD boot order has always been set to SSD (C drive), -> Large HDD (D drive) -> Smaller HDD (E drive). So no, I haven't changed my boot order since long before my last reinstall.

What will Windows do if I remove my other drives (all but C) and run the boot repair, will it write it to the C drive? If so, that's exactly what I want....but I had so many problems with the boot loader last night and don't want to go through it again. :p

[+BudMan MVC]

"What will Windows do if I remove my other drives (all but C) and run the boot repair, will it write it to the C drive?"

Yeah where else would it be able to write it ;)

[Nagisan]

"What will Windows do if I remove my other drives (all but C) and run the boot repair, will it write it to the C drive?"

Yeah where else would it be able to write it ;)

I only ask because before (when I marked C as active), I tried fixing the boot sector multiple times and it still didn't work until I physically swapped the sata cables in my case.