A Dos primary partition for all boot loaders?

[saikee]

This post has been reserved for addendum to Post #1.

Rigidity of MS Windows drive letter

When a MS Windows, from Win2k to Win7, is installed the drive letter is embedded into the system. This makes it hard to move the operating system to another partition. There are ways of working round it but the effort is not worthwhile. Thus it is advisable to adhere to the original drive letter.

As an example if a Vista has been installed in a "C" drive no new partition of the type recognised by it, (in Fat16, Fat32 or ntfs types) can be installed in front of the Vista partition in the hard disk. If one is added then the boot loader has no choice but to assign the new partition as the new "C" drive and the Vista is relegated to a "D" drive, thereby upsetting the drive letter originally embedded inside. The resulting Vista will not boot up.

If however the same Vista is installed in a "D" drive with another MS partition in front. Then it is MS practice to install Vista boot loader in the "C" drive. The Vista partition in this case can be moved around as long as there is no another MS partition in between it and the bootable "C" drive.

I have tested Vista, Win7 and Xp in various way and can confirm that these MS systems can be freely moved around with partitions as long as the drive letter embedded in the original installation is respected.

In relation to the Post #1 my recommendation is to have a "C" drive as a Dos primary partition. This will automatically make every MS Windows to install its boot loader there. In my case I have Vista orginally in a "C" and Win7 in a "D" drive. On migration I could copy the Win7 across and rebuilt its boot loader manually as it is still in a "D" drive. For the Vista I needed to do a new re-install.

When I have a bit more time I shall do a thread describing to how rebuild the boot loaders for Dos, Win2k/Xp and Vista/Win7 as they are quite easy to do.