Windows 7 Windows 7 won't recognize other partitionI

[FooSchnickens]

I'm dual booting XP and 7 on my laptop and ran into an issue.

It installed fine and I'm happily using it, however Windows 7 can only see the partition that I installed it on, it can't see the other partition that has all the XP data and all my other files.

This in and of itself isn't a huge issue since I have some room to grow in the 7 partition, but I would like to be able to get to my other files without having to boot into XP each time.

I'm no Vista ace, so if there's some quick fix that I'm unaware of I'll gladly take it. I did do some searching on google and these forums but couldn't find a similar issue to my own, only issues with people not able to access the partition they wanted to install to during the installation process.

I'll do some more poking around inside 7 to see if there's a button or switch I have to pull to make things work nice.

 

[davehc]

Open the Administrative tools and "Computer Management"
Then open "Disk Management"
Identify you XP partition, andright click it.
You will find an option there to change the partition drive letters and paths. You will find that the XP partition has no yet been given a letter (it is not "mounted")
Allocate a letter and after applying, reboot and you will find you can see the XP partition.

 

[crazlunatic]

Open the Administrative tools and "Computer Management"
Then open "Disk Management"
Identify you XP partition, andright click it.
You will find an option there to change the partition drive letters and paths. You will find that the XP partition has no yet been given a letter (it is not "mounted")
Allocate a letter and after applying, reboot and you will find you can see the XP partition.

Say when you installed XP, it was on a C drive. So if you change the drive letter to E or F, won't that mess up the system since all the file directories are set to look in C: ?

 

[davehc]

No. It is an idiosyncrasy of Vista and 7, that when you install from the DVD, it decides to assume command by calling itself C, or root.
You will find, when you reboot into XP, it will still be in C, and Vista or xp will have moved to the next available.
Confused? Join the club.

 

[Kyle]

Basically, I think of it like having two rooms, one at each end of the hallway. In the XP room, XP sees himself as "C", and when he looks down the hall, sees Windows 7 as "D". Then, from Windows 7's room, he sees HIMSELF as "C", and XP as "D" at the other end of the hall. It's a trick of perspective.

 

[davehc]

Microsoft had a new idea in teir minds at the early stage of the Vista Beta testing. They did advise testers, and users, that they should get away from the concept of letter designators, and rather give disks, partitions, usb plugs, significant names instead. It was a new concept, but once you get used to the idea, the "visual" difficulties, fall away.

 

[FooSchnickens]

Thanks, Dave. That did the trick. I actually found an article minutes before the e-mail notification popped up in my inbox about your reply. Your instructions were better, though, so I ended up using them instead.

Everything appears to be fine now. Just gotta relearn everything I once knew about windows.

 

[Grenadeh]

I have a similar problem. I refuse to single partition any machine because it's an incredibly terrible idea, so I have on my laptop (and every computer) an OS partition, and a storage parition. When I installed the 7 Beta on this machine in the spot where Vista used to be, 7 does not recognize this other partition (the D drive) no matter what I do, regardless of updates as well.

As NTFS is the native FS of Seven I don't see why it has trouble recognizing an NTFS partition created by Vista. Any suggestions?

Note: I did not update from Vista but rather reformatted the C: partition to install 7.

 

[Kylethedarkn]

I have a similar problem. I refuse to single partition any machine because it's an incredibly terrible idea, so I have on my laptop (and every computer) an OS partition, and a storage parition. When I installed the 7 Beta on this machine in the spot where Vista used to be, 7 does not recognize this other partition (the D drive) no matter what I do, regardless of updates as well.

As NTFS is the native FS of Seven I don't see why it has trouble recognizing an NTFS partition created by Vista. Any suggestions?

Note: I did not update from Vista but rather reformatted the C: partition to install 7.

I've had problems with Vista and making partitions. I would recommend using something like Gparted to take a look at the drive and make sure the one partition isn't funky.

 

[Grenadeh]

i'm not even sure if i did it with vista - it's more likely that i used partitionmagic to make it, in all honesty I don't actually know, it was almost a year ago, but as far as i know theres nothing wrong with the partition, although ill triple check