Setting Active Partition sets all others to Hidden

[achoo54321]

I'm using the partition tools on Hiren's Boot CD, and this is a
behavior I've noticed with probably all the programs I've tried
(Partition Magic Pro 8.05 and a few others). When one sets a
partition to active all the other ones are set to hidden.

At first it was just an annoyance for manual maintenance, but now that
I have to work with a boot manager program - SPF Boot Manager, or just
Special FDisk Boot Manager - that, I believe, emulates that behavior
as well it's become more than that (I don't believe it's the program
itself, but rather that in layered interaction, by setting the chosen
partition to be bootable, the same behavior is emulated by, I guess,
the MBR). XP won't interact with any partitions marked as hidden, so
I can only see the one on which XP is installed.

My question I guess is of a dual nature.
1) can I get windows XP to assign drive letters and interact with
hidden partitions (that it marks as Healthy (Unknown Partition) in
disk management)
2) even better ... can I stop that active -> hidden behavior, so that
I don't have this problem in the first place.

 

[Paul Randall]

I'm using the partition tools on Hiren's Boot CD, and this is a
behavior I've noticed with probably all the programs I've tried
(Partition Magic Pro 8.05 and a few others). When one sets a
partition to active all the other ones are set to hidden.

At first it was just an annoyance for manual maintenance, but now that
I have to work with a boot manager program - SPF Boot Manager, or just
Special FDisk Boot Manager - that, I believe, emulates that behavior
as well it's become more than that (I don't believe it's the program
itself, but rather that in layered interaction, by setting the chosen
partition to be bootable, the same behavior is emulated by, I guess,
the MBR). XP won't interact with any partitions marked as hidden, so
I can only see the one on which XP is installed.

My question I guess is of a dual nature.
1) can I get windows XP to assign drive letters and interact with
hidden partitions (that it marks as Healthy (Unknown Partition) in
disk management)
2) even better ... can I stop that active -> hidden behavior, so that
I don't have this problem in the first place.

I think I have used Norton Ghost's DOS based GDisk.exe substitude for
Microsoft's FDisk to make multiple primary partitions unhidden, any one of
which can marked active. I don't recall any partitions suddenly becoming
hidden when I made some other partition active.

-Paul Randall

 

[achoo54321]

Hiren's Boot CD has a command line version of GDisk. I hadn't tried
it, but I've now seen that it's a command line tool and I didn't want
to play around with it because it committs the commands as soon as
they are typed. However, what I did do, was go through the CD and
search for a tool that could emulate what you've said and indeed
Acronis Disk Director Suite behaves the same way that you've
described.

This was actually helpful in that it eliminated what I've considered a
possibility - that a lower software layer/driver was the one actually
behaving in the manner that I've described - therefore it has to be
that the high-level software itself was the one with the issue. It's a
shame because I liked SPF manager - there are still a few program
options I don't understand, but I don't believe they are relevant -
it's from I believe the year 2000-2003;

Searching online for answers to MY dilemma I've seen in passing that
such behavior was actually recommended for some OS interactions (I
just never linked it together that Boot Managers from that time period
might perform this automatically). It's a shame that the Acronis DIsk
Director Suite on Hiren's is version 9.xx and not 10.xx with the new
OS selector.

Can anyone please recommend a good freeware (and recent) boot
manager...

I guess that answered my second question, but my first also still
remains: can I make XP work with these hidden partitions?

Thanks

 

[Paul Randall]

Can anyone please recommend a good freeware (and recent) boot
manager...

I guess that answered my second question, but my first also still
remains: can I make XP work with these hidden partitions?

Thanks

I have not investigated freeware boot managers.

I think XP cannot be made to show hidden partions. An OS should respect
hidden partitions.

-Paul Randall

 

[achoo54321]

Just a note about something I've now learned...

Creating a partition as logical instead of primary will cause it to
NOT be affected by this - which is nice...it solves the problem at
least for some partitions towards which it might apply.

 

[Andy]

I'm using the partition tools on Hiren's Boot CD, and this is a
behavior I've noticed with probably all the programs I've tried
(Partition Magic Pro 8.05 and a few others). When one sets a
partition to active all the other ones are set to hidden.

At first it was just an annoyance for manual maintenance, but now that
I have to work with a boot manager program - SPF Boot Manager, or just
Special FDisk Boot Manager - that, I believe, emulates that behavior
as well it's become more than that (I don't believe it's the program
itself, but rather that in layered interaction, by setting the chosen
partition to be bootable, the same behavior is emulated by, I guess,
the MBR). XP won't interact with any partitions marked as hidden, so
I can only see the one on which XP is installed.

My question I guess is of a dual nature.
1) can I get windows XP to assign drive letters and interact with
hidden partitions (that it marks as Healthy (Unknown Partition) in
disk management)

You can't.

2) even better ... can I stop that active -> hidden behavior, so that
I don't have this problem in the first place.

Use XP's Disk Management to set the primary partition active.

 

[Noncompliant]

Hiren's Boot CD has a command line version of GDisk. I hadn't tried
it, but I've now seen that it's a command line tool and I didn't want
to play around with it because it committs the commands as soon as
they are typed. However, what I did do, was go through the CD and
search for a tool that could emulate what you've said and indeed
Acronis Disk Director Suite behaves the same way that you've
described.

This was actually helpful in that it eliminated what I've considered a
possibility - that a lower software layer/driver was the one actually
behaving in the manner that I've described - therefore it has to be
that the high-level software itself was the one with the issue. It's a
shame because I liked SPF manager - there are still a few program
options I don't understand, but I don't believe they are relevant -
it's from I believe the year 2000-2003;

Searching online for answers to MY dilemma I've seen in passing that
such behavior was actually recommended for some OS interactions (I
just never linked it together that Boot Managers from that time period
might perform this automatically). It's a shame that the Acronis DIsk
Director Suite on Hiren's is version 9.xx and not 10.xx with the new
OS selector.

Can anyone please recommend a good freeware (and recent) boot
manager...

I guess that answered my second question, but my first also still
remains: can I make XP work with these hidden partitions?

Thanks

XP cannot see a hidden partition file table.

There's a gazillion boot managers out there. I play it safe with System
Commander, it costs money.

 

[Noncompliant]

You can't.

Use XP's Disk Management to set the primary partition active.

Won't work. Think about it.

 

[Andy]

Won't work. Think about it.

I'm assuming he would be starting from a state in which all of the
primary partitions are visible. It certainly would work.