Drive letter changes depending on how you view them

[videobruce]

Details:
Two SATA HDD's, each with two partitions. No Raid.
First partition on each is bootable and has XP loaded. I boot to one or the other by changeing the order in the Bios.

If I open 'My Computer' the list is;*
C: Backup1, D: Main1, E: Storage1 & F: Archive1

If I type "\\Videobruce1" in the address bar of a Explorer window I get;
C: Backup1, D: Archive1, E: Main1 & F: Storage

Why is this, how can I correct this and prevent it from happening again?

http://i242.photobucket.com/albums/ff40/videobruce/musicaldriveletters.jpg

[Paul Komski]

It looks as if you are sharing the root of the four partitions, which is not a good thing to do in the first place for security reasons, and that you or someone has issued those four particular names for the shares. Go into the drives' properties - then sharing - and you should be able to call them almost anything you like.

I note in particular that Storage1 and Storage 1 are not even the same name, typographically, nor is there a colon after the drive letter in the names of the shares.

[videobruce]

I never noticed "Storage" with and without a space between the word and the number. Good catch. Regarding the absense of the colon, I didn't notice this, but I don't normally access drives or PC's using a drive name or IP address. The right screen shot was from just typing in the computer name as shown in the address bar. I assume that is the way Windows shows drive letters from what I assume is a network view.

Anyway, when I set up a PC, I disconnect the other drive (if it has one) and I plan on having two bootable drives, one on the 1st partition of each drive to eliminate the possibility of corrupting the other drive (which has happened before).

I go to 'My Computer' and right click on each of the HDD partitions and choose 'Rename' as I did when I was running 2k (which didn't seen to cause a problem). I never have used 'Map network drive' since I never looked into it and didn't think it applied in my case.

I then seup up sharing, again by right clicking on each partition and created a new share and named it the same as I did by choosing 'Rename'. I was using 'Simple File Sharing' which I could never remember if it should or should not be used since 2k didn't have this.

When I change the boot order in the bios, booting to the other drive, I noticed the problem of the drive letters changing (other than the two bootable partitions).

I realize that Simple File Sharing should be turned off, and I assume that I shouldn't use the 'Rename' right click option to rename the partitions. But, I'm not clear just what/where is the proper way to rename these drive letters so not to cause this apparent conflict between the two active partitions O/S's when I boot into one or the other.

I also realize sharing the whole partition is a security issue, but I can deal with that.

[Paul Komski]

What you are seeing are shared folders and not mapped network drives. It also is not related to simple file sharing.

You have a number of shared resources on the PC. In this instance four of the shared resources happen to be your root folders: C, D etc.

Root folders have a default shared name called C$, D$, etc with permissions you cannot alter but all shared root folders can be given other names as additional shares and this is what it appears has happened to you.

When you access any PC by name via the network with the \\ prefix it will list all the shared resources on that PC. You can also see the same shares from R-Clicking My Computer and then Manage and then Shared Folders.

Mapping any shared network resources by a drive letter is a different kettle of fish. Thus any of you shared folders could be assigned say the letter X and you could then access that folder by typing X: into the address bar. There is however little point in assigning a shared root a secondary drive letter.