Hard Drive Detection

Hey,

I am dual booting Vista/7 and while i am in vista i can see my 7 partition and its files but when i am in 7, i cant see any of vista's file or even the whole partition!
I have tried using xplorer2 lite but it doesnt see it either.
I am really stumped and i have no idea why it is invisible.
please help =]

It may be a bug in 7 which will be corrected in the beta. The problem is that (it seems not with everyone) 7 does not seem to support letter designations too well. In the early days of Vista, Microsoft advised that we should forget such, and rather give partitions significant names. Now they have scred the whole thing.
You have to open Administrative tools, either fom your start menu or the Control Panel. Select Computer management and then Disk management. You will now see the partition on which you have Vista. Sure as anything it does not have a letter!

Right click the partition and select Change drive letters and paths" Select the letter offered, or one of you choice. (This will not affect your boot manager) Close and, (I am not sure if you need a reboot, I think not) and you will now see your Vista partition in Windows EXplorer.

It's not that it doesn't see the partition, it's that it recognizes it as a partition with Windows on it, and restricts access by not assigning a letter. It's to protect you from deleting system files otherwise undeleteable due to being used on the hard disk.

You could well be right, but that honestly sounds a little odd. If you examine it , it appears to be unmounted, giving it in a letter, via management, of course mounts it.
I would be interested, however, in gaining some extra knowledge on it. Could you give me a link (Microsoft) perhaps?) which explains it?

I don't know of a link, however, I remember reading a Q&A session where a Microsoft employee stated that was the case. I'm sorry, but I'm not sure where it was I read it.

@davehc
another awesome idea dave! thanks so much. it works perfectly now.
just to note, it changes the name from "downloads" to "personal downloads" and such for other directories.

Hello ,
I am new & this is my first post.
I installed Win 7 build 6801just three days ago. First, it was dual boot with Vista 32, and then I decided to replace Vista. I then formatted my Primary or System Partition, C, which was done smoothly, and installed on it Windows 7. Then I wanted to format my Logical Drive D: on which Win 7 was previously installed. But, the Win 7 Booting DVD simply won't format my Drive D, which is nt my Primary Partition. It said that I needed elevated privileges to do that. Later, when I tried to format my drive D in Win 7 Computer>D:> (right click)>format, the partition itself became uninstalled. Error Code 0x8007048F , the device is not connected, came popping up, and I felt like a hopping dog with one leg injured. Further, Win 7 is slow to run, fast to boot, and almost all my programs, AVG Pro installed smoothly. But, it returns unexpected results. E.g. Suddenly, Windows Explorer shortcut in the (enabled) superbar, won't operate.
My evaluation is going on. Please suggest how could I reclaim my lost Partition? Thanks.

Boot an older operating system disk (XP perhaps?) and DELETE the partition, then re-create it.

In 7, disk management tools, it shows and says that my inaccessible partition is healthy, only Windows can't access it. It also offers to delete it. What should I do? Delete it right from within Windows 7 itself? does deleting cause any permanent harm eg loss of space? I only have 112 GB HDD with 4 partitions.

do you have data on the partition that you want? to access it under windows7 right click it and select change drive letter, or something similar. choose a letter and DO NOT format. you should then be able to read the partition
if you delete it, it would show up as "unallocated". then you either expand the partition next to it or make a new partition.
To make a new one just right click the unallocated space and select new partition, or something similar, and follow the creation wizard and then BOOM! ur done =]
for a partitioning software, i would sugust Gparted, its free and its a live cd, so u dont have to install anything.