How can I control disk numbering (enumeration) in Windows 7 Disk Management?

Question

A desktop system had two drives (Assigned C and D, which were enumerated in Disk Management as Disk 0 and Disk 1). A new SSD was added as the boot drive, after copying the C drive to the SSD. The SSD was connected to SATA 0 (master) port on the motherboard. The previous C Drive was moved to SATA 2 and is reformatted as a non-booting NTFS partition. The D drive remained on SATA 1.

The system boots and everything seems fine. I was able to manually adjust the Drive Letters. However, the list in Disk Management is re-ordered. Disk 0 is the the previous Disk 2 (D Drive) on SATA 1, Disk 1 is the new Boot Drive (now C) on SATA 0, and Disk 2 is the former C Drive (now assigned E) on SATA 2.

Does the Disk 0, 1, 2, designation mean anything? I would prefer to have them display in Disk Management as Drives C, D, and E from top to bottom. Is the Disk enumeration based on the SATA port or something else? (If it was based on SATA Port, they should be ordered C, D, E. Is there any way to re-order the Disk number assignments? What actually does determine the Disk number enumeration?

Solution

The numbering depends on what sata port they are plugged into. On some motherboards (I have a Gigabyte) it has markings right on the board to tell you what port is what numeration. the only way to change it is to put them in the ports the way you want them to show in disk management. They are physical "addresses" that cannot be changed.

Update:

I am sorry I did make a mistake. I was only half complete in my answer as well as I mixed settings.

SATA drives numbering is decided by the position in ports. However You can change the order shown by Disk Management by installing a new OS to a different drive. When using SATA drives Windows decides Masters and Slaves by your Bios boot order. The first Drive with a Windows OS will be listed as C: and as Disk 0 In Disk Management. So If you install a new drive and put it in place of the other drive (Disk 0) you need to check your bios and make sure it is the first Hard Drive in the boot order if you want it to show as Disk 0 in Disk Management. It is ok to have other devices before it but must be the first hard drive. Also you must check your motherboard documentation. Some manufacturers actually make specific ports master or slave.

My mix up in settings was that jumpers are only valid for master and slave on IDE drives. There are jumpers on SATAs but they are limiters. An example being, My hard drive has 3 Gb/s operation mode. I can set a jumper to limit it to 1.5 Gb/s operation.

Comments

[Mohamed Elsherbiny]

That is what I thought. My motherboard is also a Gigabyte - GA-P35-DS4. However the enumeration does not follow the SATA port numbering. I guess I should conclude that the motherboard is incorrectly documented, or Windows interprets the SATA ports differently than the BIOS?

[Mohamed Elsherbiny]

Further information is here <i.imgur.com/dXp1fSH.png>. This shows the Motherboard SATA ports, the BIOS labels for them, and the Disk number assigned by Windows.

[jmc302005]

my ports are stacked 2x3 and it goes (top-bottom) 0-1 2-3 4-5 SATA and a 1x2 stack (top-bottom) 7-6 GSATA. They are in order but it gets confusing when so many drives lol. Not like they are labeled letters in the box lol.

[jmc302005]

Ah yours plug into the top. mine plug into the sides. Basically the same thing though. My original C drive was in 0 but I dual booted win 8 and then eventually got rid of Win 7 so now my c is 1 because I never bothered switching them.

[jmc302005]

that said, on my box they are in the right spots. You might just be getting confused which is which because you have 4 plus your dvd drives. so 6 all together. Can get confusing lol.

[jmc302005]

oops you have 2 and your dvd drive. got confused with someone else for a sec lol.

[jmc302005]

just figured it out for you. your gsata ports are numbered as 0 and 1 instead of 6 and 7. So it is conflict in windows and labels them differently. Your board seems to be an older one. it may not have been intened for you to use the 0 and 1 sata ports with the 0 and 1 gsata ports. look at my numbering i posted a few minutes ago.

[jmc302005]

if you want c to be 0 then remove ST31500541AS and put it into a different spot. also you only need one master disk drive. or you can set up 0 master 1 slave 2 master 3 slave 4 master 5 slave gsata 0 master gsata 1 slave. C must be a master and the dvd drive must be a master. the rest can be slaves or in the rest of the master slots.

[jmc302005]

just realized you may not know about the jumper on the drives. because all of them are master you should make the dvd and cd drive master in sata 4 for dvd and ide for cd leave the ssd where it is then put one of the other discs in the same clip as the ssd but switch jumper to slave and put the other in the next master spot.

[Denys Cherepanin]

I don't think SATA drives have master/slave jumpers, @jmc.

[jmc302005]

@BoltClock You are correct. The jumpers are limiters. I was really tired that day and mixed things up a little. I have updated my answer to be more clear and no mix up.

[Scott - Слава Україні]

It “seems to you” that, after a reboot, Windows will remember what disk number and drive letter assignments it made on the previous boot, even if the hardware has changed since then? Have you tested this? Do you have a reference that supports it?

[Ravindra Bawane]

This is a lot of guesses, but not really based on any evidence or experience. I appreciate your attempt to answer the question but a) the question is more than 5 years old and already answered, and b) because this is a bunch of guesses it doesn't actually add anything of real value to the conversation.