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Hard drive letter names help

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Athlonight

Disabled
Joined
Apr 2, 2005
Put in a fresh new 40 gig hard drive, without unplugging my slave, so now windows is installed, and my C drive is named F.. my D drive is C.. my 2 cds are D and E..

how do i change this.. it says I can't change the name of the boot volume, is there a work around ?
 
I know that Partition Magic can do it, but I'm sure there will be some registry tweaks that can do the same thing and won't cost you anything. You tried searching on google?

Binny.
 
yeah, my boot drive is master, i've seen this happen before, and i fixed it by booting with only one hard drive and then adding the new one. but is there a way to do that without formatting again ?
 
Right click on my computer and go to "Manage." Go down to disk management, and see if it'll be nice and let you reassign some of the drive letters there.

yeah, my boot drive is master, i've seen this happen before, and i fixed it by booting with only one hard drive and then adding the new one. but is there a way to do that without formatting again ?
Yeah...just boot with only one hard drive and then add the other one. :) Try taking out your slave and just booting from the master, no CD drives or anything installed. Then put your slave and CD drives back in and give them the drive letters you want with disk manager.

FYI - two hard drives on a single IDE channel will only run as fast as the slowest drive. Also, using one drive will clog the channel, and you won't be able to use both drives at the same time, at least not very effectively.
 
Athlonight said:
Put in a fresh new 40 gig hard drive, without unplugging my slave, so now windows is installed, and my C drive is named F.. my D drive is C.. my 2 cds are D and E..

I knew there were others out there who only have a 40 gig. I use partition magic myself, but it is possible that you can do it from disk management like johan said. I have not tried to change the boot volume with disk management, but it is possible.

If that doesn't work, partition magic changes drives specifically by 'registry tweaks' although IDK what they actually are. Google may help, I wish I could be of more help, but I always use partition magic.
 
This quote is taken from the MSKB article I linked to below...
This article describes how to change the system or boot drive letter in Windows. For the most part, this is not recommended, especially if the drive letter is the same as when Windows was installed. The only time that you may want to do this is when the drive letters get changed without any user intervention. This may happen when you break a mirror volume or there is a drive configuration change. This should be a rare occurrence and you should change the drive letters back to match the initial installation.
How To Restore the System/Boot Drive Letter in Windows
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;223188
 
Right click on my computer and go to "Manage." Go down to disk management, and see if it'll be nice and let you reassign some of the drive letters there.

DO NOT do this, you will screw your windows install. - all of the reg setting and such are directed @ your windows instll drive letter and the above does not change this, this problem occurs usually when u set your slave and master wrong.
 
I didn't think you could change your boot drive letter, just all other partitioned HD's or additional HD's and Disk Drives (such as CD, DVD, etc.) using the Disk Manage in windows?
 
DO NOT do this, you will screw your windows install. - all of the reg setting and such are directed @ your windows instll drive letter and the above does not change this, this problem occurs usually when u set your slave and master wrong.
I was referring to the non-boot partitions. It probably won't let you change the boot partition, and if it could, I wouldn't recommend it either.
 
1) Unplug all drives
2) plug in os drive and boot, then shutdown
3) plug in non-os drives and boot, then shutdown
4) plug in cd-rom drives, boot and enjoy.
 
pwnt by pat said:
1) Unplug all drives
2) plug in os drive and boot, then shutdown
3) plug in non-os drives and boot, then shutdown
4) plug in cd-rom drives, boot and enjoy.

This will not work if he installed XP as a different letter than C:
 
pwnt by pat said:
From his inital post it sounds like it was c but when he added another drive it messed up the drive letters. That has happened to me more than once.

He said installed so it seems he installed it that way;) At least thats what I get from his initial post.
 
Even if windows is installed on the slave of two fresh drives it will origionally be installed so the main drive is C, or so it always has for me. I've never had a case when it didn't and I've had 4 hard drives, every combination sata/pata, pure pata, and whatnot installing to both sata and pata.

Put in a fresh new 40 gig hard drive, without unplugging my slave...

So his origional windows disk was a slave drive. He replaced/added whatever to master.

so now windows is installed, and my C drive is named F.. my D drive is C.. my 2 cds are D and E..

I think he means his drive letters were rearranged on him.

Athlonight, can you give us any more information on what had happened besides, "add a drive, keep a slave, all the letters mixed up"
 
pwnt by pat said:
Even if windows is installed on the slave of two fresh drives it will origionally be installed so the main drive is C, or so it always has for me. I've never had a case when it didn't and I've had 4 hard drives, every combination sata/pata, pure pata, and whatnot installing to both sata and pata.


Just because it has never happened to you does not make it impossible;) If for some reason XP thinks there is already a MS OS installed on C it can install to a different letter.
 
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