Review Known Issues, Limitations, and Recommendations That Relate to Disks and Partitioning

The following is a list of known issues, limitations, and recommendations that relate to disk and partitioning:

· LTI does not support the deployment of the target operating system to logical drives or dynamic disks.

· Deployments to existing disk partitions created by newer operating system versions are not supported in Refresh Computer deployment scenarios.

For example, you cannot deploy Windows Vista with SP1 to partitions created by Windows 7; you cannot deploy Windows XP with SP3 to partitions created by Windows Visa with SP1. However, you can deploy different processor architecture versions to the existing partitions created by the same operating system version. For example, you can deploy a 64-bit version of Windows 7 on a computer that is currently running a 32-bit version of Windows 7 or vice versa.

· In the Format and Partition Disk task sequence step types, always configure the logical partitions that will reside on an extended partition immediately after the extended partition. If you do not specify the logical partitions immediately after the extended partition, creating the logical partition sizes using a percentage produces unexpected results.

For example, the following partition creation order is incorrect, because the logical partitions (partition 4 and partition 5) are not immediately after the extended partition (partition 2):

Partition 1: Primary

Partition 2: Extended

Partition 3: Primary

Partition 4: Logical

Partition 5: Logical

Partition 6: Primary

Instead, create the partitions in the following order:

Partition 1: Primary

Partition 2: Extended

Partition 3: Logical

Partition 4: Logical

Partition 5: Primary

Partition 6: Primary

· Windows 7 always hides the system volume during deployment, so a drive letter is not assigned to the system volume. For example, if the target computer has one drive with two partitions, Partition_1 and Partition_2, and you deploy Windows 7 to Partition_2, Windows 7 will be properly deployed to Partition_ 2. However, a drive letter will not be assigned to Partition_1.

· After starting Windows PE, the drive letters assigned to each storage device may change. For example, if the destination computer has a CD-ROM assigned to drive D and a hard disk drive assigned to drive E, the hard disk drive will be on drive D and the CD-ROM will be on drive E when Windows PE starts. If a DVD deployment fails, check that the drives have not been reassigned on the target computer. To simplify deployment, save user data to a network location instead of to a local drive.

· Avoid editing the Unattend.xml files to format or alter the partitions. MDT might store state and user data on the partition before calling Setup.exe (in LTI scenarios), and instructions added to Unattend.xml would cause Setup to destroy that data, resulting in a deployment failure.

· While configuring the Format and Partition Disk task, always specify the extended and logical partitions together, and do not add a primary partition in-between, which gives undesirable results when a logical partition size is configured using a percentage. In other words, do not add a primary partition between an extended and logical partition.