1 drive with 2 device IDs causing corruption

[Le]

I have a drive which has been Z: for eons and has recently had G: assigned as
well. I reformatted the drive, added as Z: again and still G: is defined.

I'm getting corruption on indices (even though indexing is turned off for
the drive as Z. Ping ponging between chkdsk /f for the two IDs settles
down to no errors but then a reboot and it's back...

XP Pro, SP3, what else would help the experts?

 

[neil]

Did you remove G and Z and then reset as Z again.?
Neil

 

[Le]

G: has never shown up in the Disk Manager but does show up in "fsutil fsinfo
drives". So, no, I found no way to "remove" the drive. I did delete the
device z: in the Disk Manger prior to reformatting.

Tried dismounting G: via fsutil but no joy.

 

[Bill Blanton]

There's probably minor corruption in this registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

Assuming you have somewhat of a basic setup, make a restore point and
delete that key and reboot. Windows will re-enumerate all drive letters.

Note that if you have moved "system objects" such as the paging file or
My Documents, or if you have changed the default letter for volumes
(including adding or subtracting drives), you may have to redo all or
some of that.

Depending on your setup, there may be some risk.. Hence the restore
point.

 

[Le]

Thx Bill - did that and G: & Z: are still present based on "fsutil fsinfo
drives". My Y: drive went away and is presented as just H:. I used Disk
Manager to change the ID of the H: partition to Y: and I now have H: & Y: for
it.

 

[Le]

Thx Bill - did that and G: & Z: are still present based on "fsutil fsinfo
drives". My Y: drive went away and is presented as just H:. I used Disk
Manager to change the ID of the H: partition to Y: and I now have H: & Y: for
it.

Further - I looked at the MountedDevices enty for H: and it look identical
to Y: - deleted it, rebooted, and H: went away. Z: however, has a wildly
different key from G:'s. Would it be reasonable to replace Z:'s with G:'s
then reboot?

 

[glee]

Try this, even though it should do the same thing Bill suggested:

Open a command prompt, and type the following, and hit Enter:
set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1

Next type the following and hit Enter:
start devmgmt.msc

When Device Manager opens, click the View menu> Show Hidden Devices

Expand the Disk Drives category and delete every entry there.
Expand the Storage Volume Shadow Copies category and delete everything
there.
Expand the Storage Volumes category and delete every entry there.
Expand the USB Controllers category and delete every phantom (grayed
out) entry there....all the USB Mass Storage and Unknown Devices.

Assuming the drive letters at issue are attached to the IDE or SATA
controllers, expand the IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers category and delete
every entry there.

Close Device Manager and the command prompt window, and reboot. When
Windows starts, it will enumerate your controllers and drives. Reboot
again if prompted.

See if there is any change.

 

[John John - MVP]

Further - I looked at the MountedDevices enty for H: and it look identical
to Y: - deleted it, rebooted, and H: went away. Z: however, has a wildly
different key from G:'s. Would it be reasonable to replace Z:'s with G:'s
then reboot?

Things that I would try:

1- If you have information or partitions that you want to keep on the
disk you can rewrite the disk signature and force Windows to reenumerate
the disk and its partitions. To rewrite the signature boot the computer
with a Windows 98 Startup floppy and issue the FDISK /MBR command
against the disk, this will rewrite the disk signature but it will leave
partitions intact.

2- If you can afford to lose all the information on the disk then you
can force a reinitialization of the disk in several manners, two of them:

A- Download a disk diagnostic utility from the disk manufacturer's site
and have it zero out the first few sectors on the drive, no need to zero
out the whole disk if the utility offers an option to only rewrite the
first sectors but other than take more time it won't hurt to rewrite the
whole disk.

B- Use the Windows built-in Diskpart command line tool and use the Clean
parameter to clear the disk. Be careful with Diskpart, slippy fingers
or a lapse of attention can result in data loss!

John

 

[Le]

Thx John John. I had already deleted the disk and reformatted it then
restored from a backup. If this didn't accomplish all of what you indicated
please elucidate and I may be able to try it.

Gen & John John:
A couple of observations - the drive is configured as Dynamic. Don't
remember doing anything special to create it this way. It's a single
partition on a Hitachi DeskStar. The reason I point out the latter is that
it showed up in the USB devices as an unknown for a brief while. Curious.

It appears I'm unable to remove all the devices under IDE ATA/ATAPI and Disk
Drives at one time as the GUI requires me to reboot or the device won't be
removed. I can remove the Z: drive's entries but not the C: & Y: drives'
entries.

 

[John John - MVP]

Thx John John. I had already deleted the disk and reformatted it then
restored from a backup. If this didn't accomplish all of what you indicated
please elucidate and I may be able to try it.

Gen & John John:
A couple of observations - the drive is configured as Dynamic. Don't
remember doing anything special to create it this way. It's a single
partition on a Hitachi DeskStar. The reason I point out the latter is that
it showed up in the USB devices as an unknown for a brief while. Curious.

It appears I'm unable to remove all the devices under IDE ATA/ATAPI and Disk
Drives at one time as the GUI requires me to reboot or the device won't be
removed. I can remove the Z: drive's entries but not the C: & Y: drives'
entries.

The drive letters have really nothing to do with the hardware aspect of
the controller and disk and all to do with the disk and partition
signatures and the Mount Manager's database at
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices. You can delete remove all the
controllers and disks in the Device Manager or move the disks about from
one controller to another but the Mount Manager will keep it's drive
letter assignments as long as the disk signatures and partitions remain
the same. Formatting your drive did not touch the disk signature, it
should have removed the assigned letters but it seems that there is a
glitch with the letters assigned to the disk and rewriting the disk
signature or zeroing out the first sector (MBR) should take care of
this. A wholesale purge of the Mount Manager's database will also do
the trick but that is usually a "when all else fails" solution...

John

 

[John John - MVP]

Thx John John. I had already deleted the disk and reformatted it then
restored from a backup. If this didn't accomplish all of what you indicated
please elucidate and I may be able to try it.

Gen & John John:
A couple of observations - the drive is configured as Dynamic. Don't
remember doing anything special to create it this way. It's a single
partition on a Hitachi DeskStar. The reason I point out the latter is that
it showed up in the USB devices as an unknown for a brief while. Curious.

On Dynamic Disks the partition information is held in the LDM database.
If you don't need dynamic disks revert the disk to a Basic Disk. In
the Disk Management console right click on the disk (the big button at
the very left) and select the option to revert the disk to a basic disk,
all information on the disk will be lost.

John

 

[Bill Blanton]

The drive letters have really nothing to do with the hardware aspect of
the controller and disk and all to do with the disk and partition
signatures and the Mount Manager's database at
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices. You can delete remove all the
controllers and disks in the Device Manager or move the disks about from
one controller to another but the Mount Manager will keep it's drive
letter assignments as long as the disk signatures and partitions remain
the same. Formatting your drive did not touch the disk signature, it
should have removed the assigned letters but it seems that there is a
glitch with the letters assigned to the disk and rewriting the disk
signature or zeroing out the first sector (MBR) should take care of
this. A wholesale purge of the Mount Manager's database will also do the
trick but that is usually a "when all else fails" solution...

That's the problem. He did purge hklm\system\mounteddevices. When he
tried to change a drive letter afterward, to what it was originally, he
ended up with two letters for the one volume. Also, one volume was
apparently enumerated twice on its own. See below.

 

[Bill Blanton]

I just thought of this. You did reboot after deleting the key, correct?

 

[John John - MVP]

That's the problem. He did purge hklm\system\mounteddevices. When he
tried to change a drive letter afterward, to what it was originally, he
ended up with two letters for the one volume. Also, one volume was
apparently enumerated twice on its own. See below.

He later says that he has a dynamic disk and that the dynamic disk was
created without his knowledge. He should reinitialize the disk.

 

[Le]

Yep.

Did you remove G and Z and then reset as Z again.?
Neil



.

 

[Le]

Sure did.

 

[Le]

To All - thx profusely. You've pointed me at areas of ignorance of Windows
that I need to fill in before I move forward on this. I think I want to
retain the problem disk as dynamic as it is my data repository while the
other partitions are OS, Programs, and Temp/work files.

I need to get an understanding of the LDM and features surrounding its
management and also concepts of disk signatures etc. So, it will probably
be a week or more before I check in with results / further queries.

If any of you have URLs for particularly concise coverage of the issues of
the LDM, Windows disk signatures, etc. I'm open.

Thx again.

 

[John John - MVP]

To All - thx profusely. You've pointed me at areas of ignorance of Windows
that I need to fill in before I move forward on this. I think I want to
retain the problem disk as dynamic as it is my data repository while the
other partitions are OS, Programs, and Temp/work files.

I need to get an understanding of the LDM and features surrounding its
management and also concepts of disk signatures etc. So, it will probably
be a week or more before I check in with results / further queries.

If any of you have URLs for particularly concise coverage of the issues of
the LDM, Windows disk signatures, etc. I'm open.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/329707
Best practices for using dynamic disks on Windows 2000-based computers

John

 

[glee]

Basic Storage Versus Dynamic Storage in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314343

How To Convert to Basic and Dynamic Disks in Windows XP Professional
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309044

Converting Basic Disks to Dynamic Disks
http://www.theeldergeek.com/hard_drives_10.htm