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Case of the missing partitions when downgrading from W7 to XP

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Stoic Joker:
I just don't see the peek-A-boo partition as an alignment issue. That and I think that the whole partition alignment thing is getting a little out of hand. Unless you're going to/from SSD/machanical drives.

It sounds more like in the process of flopping the OS back and forth between machines, you picked up a script/policy/startup command that is trying to hide what it thinks is a recovery partition.

4wd:
^ +1 here.

An alignment problem is more likely to cause a slow down in the data transfer rate.

Given it appears to be an IDE drive, I would have thought it's unlikely to suffer from mis-alignment since it will probably have 512b sectors.

But if you'd like to check the alignment of your drive, try using the following:
Dell Advanced Format HDD Detection Tool

C:\dell\drivers\R306204>C:\dell\drivers\R306204\DellAFDT.exe
Model:                                        SAMSUNG HD103UJ
Serial#:                                      S13PJ1KS315664
Advanced Format:                              No
Partition Alignment:                          Aligned
    Partition 1:                              Aligned [D:]
Identify Data Word 106:                       0x0
Identify Data Word 117:                       0x0
Identify Data Word 118:                       0x0
Identify Data Word 209:                       0x0

Model:                                        SAMSUNG HD103UJ
Serial#:                                      S13PJ1LS310988
Advanced Format:                              No
Partition Alignment:                          Aligned
    Partition 1:                              Aligned [U:]
    Partition 2:                              Aligned [Not assigned]
Identify Data Word 106:                       0x0
Identify Data Word 117:                       0x0
Identify Data Word 118:                       0x0
Identify Data Word 209:                       0x0


C:\dell\drivers\R306204>

--- End quote ---

The second drive above has 2 partitions, both aligned but only the first appears as a normal volume - the second is purely a Truecrypt volume and appears as Raw.

I can unhide it with any partition tool and it will show up for that session, but after a reboot it is gone into hiding again.-brahman (September 12, 2011, 07:08 AM)
--- End quote ---

Is that only from within XP?

Have you checked the partitions Hidden flag when the OS is offline, (ie. boot from Parted Magic, Paragon Partition Manager, etc) ?

brahman:
I wanted to report how I solved the problem.

After much effort it was quite simple:

In Partition Wizard Hoem Edition I used the feature "Rebuild MBR" and voila the partition was sticky from now on.

On some other machine this feature also solved a problem where Win7 did not want to hibernate with Diskcryptor installed on the system partition.

I can HIGHLY recommend this software.

http://partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html

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