Assigning Drive Letters in WinXP (Full Version)

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jeepless -> Assigning Drive Letters in WinXP (5/17/2005 11:21:13)

I've been asked by a client to install a 2nd hard drive in his Windows XP box. Okay that's simple enough to do, but there's one catch -- this new drive MUST be setup as drive "C". He wants to install an application that is hard-coded to ONLY install on that drive letter. When he built his PC, XP assigned his hard drive as "E", with his Zip drive at "C" and the CDROM at "D". Reassigning his present hard drive to "C" means re-installing XP and all his applications and that's what I want to avoid.

I know XP will let me reassign the Zip and CDROM drives to other letters, but will it let me assign the 2nd hard drive to "C" while keeping his present hard drive at "E"? I need to know if it can be done before I open a can of worms!

Thanks!



ou812 -> RE: Assigning Drive Letters in WinXP (5/17/2005 12:06:09)

I believe it can be done, but you may want to give it a quick try to make sure. On my system I've changed them around quite some time ago without a hitch.

http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article02-024
Windows 2000 and Windows XP

* Open the Disk Management console (diskmgmt.msc).
* Right-click on any drive, and select Change drive letter and path.
* Windows will let you know if the drive letter cannot be changed for some reason.



bobby -> RE: Assigning Drive Letters in WinXP (5/17/2005 12:59:10)

C:/ must be your primary boot partition/drive (the one with Windows installed on it)

Otherwise Windows won't boot (there may be tweaks for the MBR but I'm not that knowledgable about Win systems to know)





ou812 -> RE: Assigning Drive Letters in WinXP (5/17/2005 13:40:25)

Bobby, one of my PC's boots with Windows on E: And, it only does this accidently. I meant to have it on C:, but just decided to leave it as is.



bobby -> RE: Assigning Drive Letters in WinXP (5/17/2005 14:12:20)

Interesting...

then in theory you should be able to rename C:/ to another available letter and then mount the new drive as C:/

I'd recommend a really good backup of the main disk before trying it  [:D]



rdouglass -> RE: Assigning Drive Letters in WinXP (5/17/2005 14:58:03)

32 bit windows can boot under virtually any drive letter; I have all my Terminal Servers booting from drive H: so their local drives show up (in a terminal session) under their proper drive letters.  ie: their local C drive still shows up as C in the terminal session.

I find it somewhat strange however that a Zip drive is the boot.  What happens if there is no media in the drive?  How about setting the boot order in the BIOS.  SOmetimes just doing that will change the drive letter in some implementations of Windows.



bobby -> RE: Assigning Drive Letters in WinXP (5/17/2005 16:34:47)

that makes sense... pretty easy solution, too

[8|]



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