Wierd partition changes under Vista Ultimate

[Mihai Naie]

I installed Vista Ultimate on a 80GB hdd while having another 120GB SATA hdd
in my sistem. After the installation ended I formated the SATA hdd into one
big partition to use it as storage drive (no programs, just data). After
installing some stuff, etc (luckly nothing on the SATA hdd) I went to sleep
and this morning I found out that my 120 GB was turned into one 80GB
partition and one 40GB unallocated space. I did the initial
partitioning/formatting after installing all the updates from Windows
Update, etc.

During the installation I had to move around some files and change some
partitions and I also had the surprise to see my partitions changing around
without warning, but I thought it was because of the installation. This
time, it was after I finished everything and closed the computer so....dunno
what to think of it.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance

 

[philo]

During the installation I had to move around some files and change some
partitions and I also had the surprise to see my partitions changing around
without warning,

Please clarify the above statement

 

[Mihai Naie]

I had both my harddisks partitioned in two partitions each (20+60 on the
80GB ATA hdd and 40+80 on the 120GB SATA hdd) and I moved files around so I
can merge the partitions into one for each hdd (initially I installaed Vista
on 20GB and it was almost full before installing any other programs).
At one point, one of my partitions was of 80GB on the 120 GB SATA and I had
some files on it from the smaller hdd which I just partitioned into a big
80GB partition. Upon a restart my 120GB SATA was partitioned into 3x40GB
partitions and of course...all my files were lost. I blamed the instalation
I had to start in order to get to the point where I could
delete/create/format partitions on the 80GB hdd (where I previously had the
vista installation on the 20GB partition which I couldn't delete even after
installing vista into the 40GB partition on the 120GB SATA).

I know it's confusing, but one full day of installations and uninstallation
IS bound to be confusing ;-)

Thanks for help.

 

[philo]

I had both my harddisks partitioned in two partitions each (20+60 on the
80GB ATA hdd and 40+80 on the 120GB SATA hdd) and I moved files around so I
can merge the partitions into one for each hdd (initially I installaed Vista
on 20GB and it was almost full before installing any other programs).
At one point, one of my partitions was of 80GB on the 120 GB SATA and I had
some files on it from the smaller hdd which I just partitioned into a big
80GB partition. Upon a restart my 120GB SATA was partitioned into 3x40GB
partitions and of course...all my files were lost. I blamed the instalation
I had to start in order to get to the point where I could
delete/create/format partitions on the 80GB hdd (where I previously had the
vista installation on the 20GB partition which I couldn't delete even after
installing vista into the 40GB partition on the 120GB SATA).

I know it's confusing, but one full day of installations and uninstallation
IS bound to be confusing ;-)

Thanks for help.

It's pretty hard to sort out what *exaxctly* it was tha you did...
but it looks like things are a mess right now.
I'd backup all the data and start over fresh.

Once you are sure all your data is backed up and the files are not
corrupt...

Install Vista fresh and delete all partitions.

I'd install Vista on the 80 gig drive and leave it all as one partition.

You can use that for the OS, for applications and for data.
then use the 120 gig drive all as one partition...
and use that for any add'l data.

It will be considerably more simple...and you will not have to worry about
re-allocating again

 

[Mihai Naie]

This is exaclty what I did after all the mess with the partitions on both
hdds. I installed Vista onto the 80GB and formated the 120GB into one big
partition. Problem is, once I opened the computer today, instead of this
partition there was one of 80GB and 40GB of unallocated space. When I went
to sleep last night the partition looked ok.

Right now things seems to be OK, I still don't use the 120GB partition until
I can be sure no "out of the blue" repartition is happening.

Thanks.

 

[philo]

This is exaclty what I did after all the mess with the partitions on both
hdds. I installed Vista onto the 80GB and formated the 120GB into one big
partition. Problem is, once I opened the computer today, instead of this
partition there was one of 80GB and 40GB of unallocated space. When I went
to sleep last night the partition looked ok.

Right now things seems to be OK, I still don't use the 120GB partition until
I can be sure no "out of the blue" repartition is happening.

Something is definately not right there.
Do you perhaps have the machine set-up with RAID?


There is no way (I can think of) that the OS would initiate any partition
changes without you having initiated them.

OTOH: If you have built a hardware RAID prior to installing your OS...
then it's possible that one drive would "mirror" the other if setup as RAID
1

 

[Mihai Naie]

No raid whatsoever. I was thinking that maybe there's something related with
the backup features of vista? Maybe the OS tried to mirror the active/system
partition on the other hdd for backup purposes?
Dunno what to say, so far things look like working, I'll get back if there's
any developments.

 

[philo]

No raid whatsoever. I was thinking that maybe there's something related with
the backup features of vista? Maybe the OS tried to mirror the active/system
partition on the other hdd for backup purposes?
Dunno what to say, so far things look like working, I'll get back if there's
any developments.

Well, unless you had setup a hardware RAID...Vista should not make any
partition changes or perform backups
unless you have initiated them. Though I'm sure Vista still has some bugs in
it...I'm also sure that re-allocating partitions is not one of them!