Win xp drive letters

I completed the assembly of my new P4C800-E system last night. Everything
went fine, the only h/w mistakes was the panel LEDs didn't work because they
were backwards.

The system has 4 hard drives, 1 DVD-RW and 1 DVD rom. The drives are
configured as follows:

South Bridge controller:
74GB WDRaptor: SATA1 (unformatted)
250GB Hitachi: SATA2 (unformatted)
160GB Maxtor: Primary IDE, Master (contains data)
80GB IBM: Primary IDE, Slave (contains data on 2 partitions)
DVDRW: Secondary IDE, Master
DVD: Secondary IDE, Slave

When I installed Windows xp on the WD Raptor, it resulted in these drive
assignments:

c: Maxtor
d: IBM partition 1
e: IBM partition 2
f: DVD-RW
g: DVD rom
h: WD Raptor (boot drive)

I like my boot drive to be the c: drive, so I tried to reassign the drive
letters with Win xp Drive Manager, it would not let me change the drive
letter of the boot drive. I'm ready to reload Win xp to get the WD Raptor
boot drive to be the c: drive. Any suggestions on how to do it?

Al

 

Disconnect the other drives, format the Raptor and install WinXP on
it. After that reconnect the other drives. If your BIOS allows it you
can also just disable the other drives.

Nanga

 

c: Maxtor

In BIOS, make the drive you want to be C: be your first drive. Then create
the partition in the XP setup on your C: drive and format it in NTFS
(quick), then reboot. After that, it should be designated the C: drive on
startup. Then you can install XP on it.

 

I don't understand - where do I enter this contest?

 

I disabled them in the bios, then reformatted and reinstalled Windows. It
worked fine.

I guess it didn't matter, but it just didn't feel right having the Root
drive the H: drive.

Thanks,
Al

c: drive. Any suggestions on how to do it?

 

I had a similar problem with a zip disk on IDE

Pushed the boot drive to F:

As the other posters indicated the quickest and safest way is to do a strip
and reinstall.

 

not to mention it's a PITA when it seems every windows program in the world
wants to default to c:\ no matter what the %system drive really is.

 

Hello,

This I don't quite understand because -under Win'98se at least- one
can make use of the settings of the iomega driver to change drive
letters in an easy way?

Max M.
==================

 

I would just restart the system using just the Raptor boot drive.
Disconnect all other drives. That should make it C:. Then start adding
the other drives in whatever order you'd like them to end up....

Gene

 

If its WinXP there is a way to edit the registry to reassign the drive
letters.

However, you really must have a full system backup in case your system
becomes unbootable.
Make sure you have installed and enabled all / full Recovery Console
functionality otherwise if you get this wrong you will not be able to affect
anything that is not on what the OS thinks is the boot disk and windows
directory - it won't let you. IE you end up with a stuffed system & have to
do a reinstall / restore.

I had this happen after 2 drives in a raid 1 failed. The second drive only
partially failed and I got the system back from the maker with the drive
letters swappped & could do nothing with it 'cos recovery console was not
installed completely.

So - three options:

1. Locate the MS KB article on how to edit / reassign the drive letters.
Backup everything and then follow the instructions.
2. Ghost the drives and then ghost them back in the right place.
3. reinstall windows.

If you go with 1. double check that the current c: is / is not the boot
volume - enable viewing of system and hidden files (including OS hidden
files) then look in c: drive and if you see files: ntldr, boot.ini,
ntbootdd.sys (optional) etc. then this is a boot volume. You will need to
copy these files to your 'real' system drive and mark the boot partition
active.

One of the fix methods is to use the Win98's fdisk /mbr with the correct
drive in as C and all other drives out of the picture. This can fail for
several reasons, effectively stuffing your C: drive partition. I tried this
and it turned the partition table into custard, but it is supposed to work.

Recommend method 2 or 3 - less hassle, less technical, and if you stuff up
1. (which is likely) you will do it that way anyway.

- Tim