Hard Drive Designations

[Steveski]

Last night I had my master hard drive crash. I went out and bought a new 320GB Western Digital ATA/100 drive to replace my old 40GB IBM drive that cratered.

In my previous setup, my Master drive (40GB) was c: , my slave drive an 80GB drive was d:, my CD/ROM was e: and my DVD was f:. After installing the new hard drive, I did a fresh Window XP Home Edition install. Strangely now my master (320GB drive) is f:, my slave is c:, and my CD and DVD drives are respectively d: and e:.

This does not seem to be a problem but I would prefer the old order with my master as C: and slave as D:.

Can anyone explain what happened and is there a way to rename or redesignate the drive to the old format?

Thanks!

[schusterjo]

Instructions are for "category view" control panel and not classic. in order to change simply Click Start, click Control Panel, and then click on left side "Switch to category view" when done switch it back to classic if you would like.

How to assign a drive letter
To assign a drive letter to a drive, a partition, or a volume, follow these steps: 1. Log on as Administrator or as a member of the Administrators group.
2. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then click Performance and Maintenance.

Note If you do not see Performance and Maintenance, go to step 3. Performance and Maintenance appears in Control Panel only if you use Category view. If you use Classic view, Performance and Maintenance does not appear.
3. Click Administrative Tools, double-click Computer Management, and then click Disk Management in the left pane.
4. Right-click the drive, the partition, the logical drive, or the volume that you want to assign a drive letter to, and then click Change Drive Letter and Paths.
5. Click Add.
6. Click Assign the following drive letter if it is not already selected, and then either accept the default drive letter or click the drive letter that you want to use.
7. Click OK.
The drive letter is assigned to the drive, to the partition, or to the volume that you specified, and then that drive letter appears in the appropriate drive, partition, or volume in the Disk Management tool.


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How to change a drive letter
To change an existing drive letter on a drive, on a partition, or on a volume, follow these steps: 1. Log on as Administrator or as a member of the Administrators group.
2. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then click Performance and Maintenance.
3. Click Administrative Tools, double-click Computer Management, and then click Disk Management in the left pane.
4. Right-click the drive, the partition, the logical drive, or the volume that you want to assign a drive letter to, and then click Change Drive Letter and Paths.
5. Click Change.
6. Click Assign the following drive letter if it is not already selected, click the drive letter that you want to use, and then click OK.
7. Click Yes when you are prompted to confirm the drive letter change.
The drive letter of the drive, the partition, or the volume that you specified is changed, and the new drive letter appears in the appropriate drive, partition, or volume in the Disk Management tool.


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How to remove a drive letter
To remove an existing drive letter on a drive, on a partition, or on a volume, follow these steps: 1. Log on as Administrator or as a member of the Administrators group.
2. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then click Performance and Maintenance.
3. Click Administrative Tools, double-click Computer Management, and then click Disk Management in the left pane.
4. Right-click the drive, the partition, the logical drive, or the volume that you want to assign a drive letter to, and then click Change Drive Letter and Paths.
5. Click Remove.
6. Click Yes when you are prompted to confirm the removal.
The drive letter is removed from the drive, from the partition, or from the volume that you specified.

[Hagar]

You cannot change drive letter of a system partiton. So you cannot easily get the old order.
The reason for the new order is that you did a Windows install with the old drives connected. The old drive is then kept as System (all the boot files), and the new drive gets an extended partiton. It cannot boot by itself.

Always disconnect other drives when installing Windows.

[Erik]

Always disconnect other drives when installing Windows.

This is not necessary. Windows will ask you where you want to install Windwos to, and that will become the C:\ drive. So I am guessing that you have not done much yet with this install, the easiest fix would be to reinstall and format everything. Just be careful which drive you choose when Windows asks where to install too.

If you are not sure then disconnecting the drives you want to be used for storage later on works. Though if you have one 80GB drive and one 320GB drive it should be easy to just look at the size and tell the difference.

[Hagar]

The Windows installer partitioning tool is very 'simple minded'. Some people delete the partition and create a new one, instead of just reformating. If the partition tool then finds another primary partition, the new partition will be an extended. You end up with separate System and Boot partitions, and the Windows partition is no longer C:
So to avoid such inconveniencies it is advisable to disconnect other drives. But if you know not to delete the partiton it is not necessary.