Managing Volumes During Windows XP Professional Setup

Before you begin Windows XP Professional Setup on an x86-based computer, either as a new installation or as an upgrade, review your current disk configuration and determine whether you need to create additional volumes during Setup. Because your options for creating and formatting volumes are limited during Setup, you might want to create only the system and boot volumes during Setup, and then wait until Setup completes before you create and format additional volumes.

If your computer uses multidisk volumes created by using Windows NT 4.0, you must follow the guidelines provided in the next section.

Warning 

If you upgrade from Windows 98 or Windows Me to Windows XP Professional, do not make any changes to your disk configuration after Setup completes if you want to uninstall Windows XP Professional and revert to the previous operating system. For example, converting a volume to NTFS, converting a disk to dynamic, or deleting volumes can prevent you from uninstalling Windows XP Professional. For more information, see Supporting Installations in this book.

To ensure that you can successfully install Windows XP Professional, you must verify that the computer s mass storage controllers, such as Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA), IDE, SCSI, RAID, or Fibre Channel adapters, are listed in the Hardware Compatibility List (HCL). You might also need to obtain from the device manufacturer a separate device driver for use with Windows XP Professional. After you obtain the device driver, copy it to a floppy disk before you begin Setup. During the early part of Setup, a line of text at the bottom of the screen prompts you to press F6. Additional prompts help you install the device driver so that Setup can gain access to the mass storage controller.

If you are unsure whether Windows XP Professional supports your mass storage controller, you can try running Setup. If the controller is not supported, you receive the Stop message 0x7B INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE.

For more information about the HCL, see the Microsoft Windows Hardware Compatibility List link on the Web Resources page at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/reskits/webresources For information about managing volumes in Itanium-based computers during Setup, see Creating Partitions During Setup of Windows XP 64-Bit Edition later in this chapter.

Preparing Multidisk Volumes for Windows XP Professional

Ftdisk.sys was the fault-tolerant driver that was used to manage volume sets and stripe sets in Windows NT Workstation 4.0 and earlier. To encourage administrators to begin using dynamic volumes, Windows 2000 offers limited support for Ftdisk volumes. Completing this transition, Windows XP Professional does not support volume sets or stripe sets. Therefore, before you install Windows XP Professional on an x86-based computer, you must do one of the following:

• If you are upgrading from Windows NT Workstation 4.0 to Windows XP Professional, you need to back up and then delete all multidisk volumes before you upgrade because Windows XP Professional cannot access these volumes. Be sure to verify that your backup was successful before deleting the volumes. After you finish upgrading to Windows XP Professional, create new dynamic volumes and then restore the data.

  If you do not back up the volumes before you upgrade to Windows XP Professional, Disk Management shows the volumes as Failed. You must use Ftonline.exe to restore the volumes to Healthy so that you can access data on them. Access is only valid for the current session so that you can back up the data before you delete the volumes. If you reboot, you must run Ftonline again. For more information about using Ftonline.exe, click Tools in Help and Support Center, and then click Windows Support Tools.

  Note 

  Before you can upgrade a computer that is running Windows NT 4.0 to Windows XP Professional, you must first install Service Pack 6 or later.

• If you are upgrading from Windows NT Workstation 4.0 to Windows XP Professional and the paging file resides on a volume set or stripe set, you must use System in Control Panel to move the paging file to a primary partition or logical drive before beginning Setup.

• If you are upgrading from Windows 2000 Professional to Windows XP Professional, you must use Disk Management to convert all basic disks that contain multidisk volumes to dynamic disks before beginning Setup or Setup does not continue.

Creating Volumes During Windows XP Professional Setup

During Windows XP Professional Setup, you can create basic volumes by using unallocated space from the basic disks that are installed in the computer. For example, on a single unformatted hard disk, you can create a system volume and separate boot volume, or you can create a single combined system and boot volume that uses all unallocated space on the disk. You can also create additional basic volumes on the same disk and on other disks in the computer if unallocated space is available. However, you cannot create additional volumes on dynamic disks during Setup.

Although you can specify the size of each basic volume, you cannot specify whether to create a primary partition, extended partition, or logical drive. Setup determines the type of volume as follows:

• If no partitions exist on the disk, Setup creates a primary partition of the size you specified.

• If a single primary partition exists, Setup creates an extended partition by using the remaining contiguous, unallocated space on the disk. Setup then creates a logical drive (within the extended partition) of the size you specified.

• If a primary partition and an extended partition exist on the disk and no free space exists within the extended partition, Setup creates an additional primary partition of the size you specified.

  Note 

  When you create basic volumes during Setup, Setup reserves 1 MB or one cylinder, whichever is greater, at the end of the disk. Setup reserves the space for the dynamic disk database so that you can convert the disk to dynamic if you want to.

After you create each volume, Setup assigns it a drive letter. The drive letter that Setup chooses depends on whether other basic volumes, dynamic volumes, and removable disks have drive letters already assigned. For all volumes and removable disks without drive letters, Setup assigns drive letters by using the following method:

1. Scans all fixed hard disks as they are enumerated. Assigns drive letters starting with any active primary partition (if one exists); otherwise, scans the first primary partition on each disk. Assigns the next available letter starting with C.

2. Scans all fixed hard disks and removable disks, and assigns drive letters to all logical drives in an extended partition or the removable disk(s) as enumerated. Assigns the next available letter starting with C.

3. Scans all fixed hard disks and assigns drive letters to all remaining primary partitions. Assigns the next available letter starting with C.

4. Scans floppy drives and assigns the next available drive letter starting with A.

5. Scans CD ROM drives and assigns the next available letter starting with D.

Windows XP Professional and Windows 2000 assign drive letters differently from how Windows 98, Windows Me, and Windows NT 4.0 assign drive letters. Therefore, if the computer starts multiple operating systems, the drive letters might vary depending on which operating system is running. For more information about how Windows XP Professional and Windows 2000 assign drive letters, see the Microsoft Knowledge Base link on the Web Resources page at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/reskits/webresources Search the Knowledge Base by using the keywords LDM and cmdcons.

If an existing removable disk is not turned on during Setup, Windows XP Professional might give its drive letter to a new volume. For example, if a removable disk had drive letter G in Windows 2000 but was turned off during Windows XP Professional Setup, a newly created volume might be given drive letter G. To ensure that drive letter assignments remain constant, you must keep removable disk devices turned on when you create new volumes.

After Setup is complete, you can change drive letters for most volumes and removable disks by using Disk Management or the DiskPart command-line tool.

To change a drive letter by using Disk Management

1. From the Start menu, click Run.

2. In the Open box, type diskmgmt.msc, and then click OK.

3. Right-click the volume whose drive letter you want to change, and then click Change Drive Letter and Paths.

4. Click Change, and then select the drive letter you want to use.

Note 

You can assign drive letters A and B to removable disks, such as Iomega Zip drives, and also to floppy drives. You cannot assign these drive letters to fixed hard disks.

For information about using DiskPart to change drive letters, see Windows XP Professional Help.

Note 

The DiskPart retain command adds an entry to the partition table of an MBR disk only for simple volumes that are contiguous, start at cylinder-aligned offsets, and are an integral number of cylinders in size. If a volume does not meet these requirements, the retain command fails. The following examples describe volumes on which the retain command will succeed:

• The simple volume is contiguous and starts at the beginning of the disk

• The simple volume was present on the disk when the disk was converted to dynamic.

You cannot use Disk Management to change the drive letter of the system or boot volumes. Instead, you must change the drive letter by making certain changes in the registry. This procedure is not recommended unless you are changing the drive letter back to the original letter.

For more information about changing the drive letter of the system or boot volume, see the Microsoft Knowledge Base link on the Web Resources page at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/reskits/webresources Search the Knowledge Base by using the keywords mounted, devices, and partition.

For more information about formatting volumes during Setup, see File Systems in this book.