Different operating systems apply different approaches to enumeration of the primary partitions on MBR disks.
In Linux:
In Linux, every partition has a special symbolic name that encodes a hard disk containing a partition, and a partition
itself. Partitions are addressed and accessed by using their symbolic names. Symbolic names are automatically
generated by Linux in accordance with the order of hard disks in BIOS and the order of partition records in the
Partition Table. Thus changing enumeration of the primary partitions can lead to changing of paths to some
important resources.
In DOS:
MS-DOS uses a rather sophisticated algorithm for a drive letter assignment. A drive letter, which is assigned to a
partition, depends on the order of records in the Partition Table. Thus changing enumeration of the primary
partitions affects the drive letters assignment. In early versions of MS-DOS, it could even lead to the unavailability
of a partition.
Hard Disk Manager enables you to change enumeration of the primary partitions on a basic MBR disk, and this way
fix boot problems that may occur after a boot manager failure or incorrect work of a disaster recovery utility.
- Click Disks & Volumes on the sidebar.
- Left click an MBR disk in the working area, then select Change primary slots on the sidebar.
- Use the corresponding buttons to move the selected partition up and down within the primary part of the
partition table.
OS may no longer start up after changing enumeration of system partitions.- If necessary, click Notifications to set up e-mail notification about successful completion and/or failure of
the operation. Find more details in Notifications Settings.