Several Easy BCD installs on different partitions-will this cause conflict?

J

joemardo1

Member
Hi folks,

I have a hard disk divided into various partitions with xp(boot) on C windows 7 on D and E and windows 8 on F. I also have a data partition H on there and also have another hard disk in my computer for data only.

As I have said xp is the boot and has the MBR.

For easy of simplicity when using each OS I have Easy BCD installed on each and will edit them now and and again as the need may arise.

My question is,

Should I really only edit Easy BCD on one OS such as the boot xp so as not to cause any conflict or does it not really matter, because Easy BCD will know the disk and partition setup on each OS and will act accordingly when writing to the MBR on xp?

I should add that within each OS (for example xp) the drive letter of some of the other partitions can be different to what I have, when logged onto a different OS for example windows 7.

For some reason the data partition on my main hard disk drive has deleted itself on 2 occassions showing up as unallocated space in disk management, but overall Easy BCD is a brilliant utility and has saved my a** many a time.

any advice gratefully appreciated.

Joe
 
No matter where you run EasyBCD (however many copies - and you don't actually need more than one, you can run it from one OS by just calling the .exe with a shortcut from another), it will be operating on the one "live" BCD which controls your boot. (unless you installed each OS independently with its own boot files and are using a third party boot manager).
There are no disk letters in the BCD.
The letters you see displayed by EasyBCD are translations of the unintelligible UID information which the BCD actually contains.
EasyBCD will give you the letters as seen by the OS from which you run it.
That's why it might appear that you are viewing different BCDs, but you're not.
XP running as C might call W7 "x" in Explorer, and W7 running as C might call XP "y".
That's because disk letters are not physical entities, just virtual labels stored in the registry of the running OS.
Whatever you see in explorer from any of your systems, is also what EasyBCD will report.
You can change the disk letter of any partition or device in Disk Management as long as it's not flagged "system" "boot" or "page",
It's therefore a good idea to ensure that all of your OSs see all shared resources by the same letter map.
They'll each work just as well with a totally random mapping, but there's much more chance that you will get confused and accidentally delete your big data partition instead of the camera memory card you meant to clear.
Maybe that's why you've "lost" your data partition a few times inexplicably.
 
Terry60 said:
No matter where you run EasyBCD (however many copies - and you don't actually need more than one, you can run it from one OS by just calling the .exe with a shortcut from another), it will be operating on the one "live" BCD which controls your boot. (unless you installed each OS independently with its own boot files and are using a third party boot manager).
There are no disk letters in the BCD.
The letters you see displayed by EasyBCD are translations of the unintelligible UID information which the BCD actually contains.
EasyBCD will give you the letters as seen by the OS from which you run it.
That's why it might appear that you are viewing different BCDs, but you're not.
XP running as C might call W7 "x" in Explorer, and W7 running as C might call XP "y".
That's because disk letters are not physical entities, just virtual labels stored in the registry of the running OS.
Whatever you see in explorer from any of your systems, is also what EasyBCD will report.
You can change the disk letter of any partition or device in Disk Management as long as it's not flagged "system" "boot" or "page",
It's therefore a good idea to ensure that all of your OSs see all shared resources by the same letter map.
They'll each work just as well with a totally random mapping, but there's much more chance that you will get confused and accidentally delete your big data partition instead of the camera memory card you meant to clear.
Maybe that's why you've "lost" your data partition a few times inexplicably.
Click to expand...

Thank you very much Terry for the explanation and speedy reply.

Its a great utility cant see myself doing without it :smile:

joe
 
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