Techie Tuesday: Drive letters assigned to restored or cloned partitions

This blog post explains how to change the drive letters of restored or cloned partitions during and after the restore or clone process.

How Windows assigns drive letters to mounted volumes (drives) on your system

Windows maintains driver letter persistence by storing a reference to each mounted volume and drive letter in the system registry using the following registry key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc978525.aspx

Note: When restoring using the Windows PE rescue media, the letters assigned to restored partitions are temporary for that Windows PE session only. When you boot into the restored system, drive letter assignments will be exactly the same as they were when the image was created.

Changing drive letters in the ‘Restore Wizard’ or ‘Clone Wizard’ when running Reflect in Windows

1. In the Restore Wizard Click the ‘Restored Partition Properties’ link after copying or dragging the partition to it’s destination on the target disk:
   Note: In the Clone Wizard Click ‘Cloned Partition Properties’.

2. In the ‘Partition Properties’ dialog click the ‘Drive Letter’ combo box:

Properties:

Auto: Let Windows automatically assign the next available drive letter
None: No drive letter will be assigned to the restored partition
Letter: Select a drive letter to use from thie list of free letters. The original drive letter will be selected by default.

Changing drive letters using the Windows Disk Management Console after restoring or cloning

Windows ships with a utility to maintain local drives and partitions called the Windows Disk Management Console (DMC). Using the DMC you can easily change the drive letters assigned to any partition on your system, (except for your system drive C:),

1. To start the Windows Disk Management Console
   Click ‘Start’ or press the Windows Key, Type the following and press enter:
   diskmgmt.msc
2. The DMC starts as shown below:

3. Right click on the partition that you want to change in the lower pane and select ‘Change drive letters and paths’:

4. In the dialog that opens, select the original drive letter, Click ‘Change’, Choose a new drive letter and finally Click ‘OK’

See also:

Restoring and browsing
Restoring an image from Windows
Restoring a system image
Modifying restored partition properties

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