Change letter drive of Windows?

GargGarg Purveyor of Lincoln Nightmares Icrontian
edited November 2004 in Science & Tech
I just installed Windows onto the drive WD sent me back, and it made it the F drive, and my other hard drive is C. Is there any way I can switch them (without reinstalling)? Now would be the time, since I don't have anything else installed that could get confused.

Thanks!

Comments

  • TheSmJTheSmJ
    edited November 2004
    If you want to switch the physical drives, you could image the C drive with your current F drive using Norton Ghost, and then simply swapping the F: drive to primary master.
  • CBCB Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Der Millionendorf- Icrontian
    edited November 2004
    If you want to switch the drive letters it is already too late. You would have to reinstall windows.
  • MediaManMediaMan Powered by loose parts.
    edited November 2004
    You can switch drive letters for every other drive but C:\. In windows XP

    START>CONTROL PANEL>ADMINSTRATIVE TOOLS>COMPUTER MANAGEMENT

    Click on DISK MANAGEMENT

    Right click on the drive and choose CHANGE DRIVE LETTER AND PATHS.

    You can try changing C but you'd better image the drive first incase you fubar Windows.

    You may have to reshuffle a few things to by moving some drives further down the alphabet and then changing them to the final drive letter assignment you want.
  • TBonZTBonZ Ottawa, ON Icrontian
    edited November 2004
    Also, Partition Magic will do that also as well as remapping all your program and file paths. As MM stated though, make a backup image before trying.
  • DexterDexter Vancouver, BC Canada
    edited November 2004
    I've run into this a few times, and using the tricks above can cause a conflict. The best way to do this is to physically disconnect the old C drive, and then, as CBDroege said, reinstall Windows onto the new one without the old C drive connected. By default, Windows will make this new one C.

    Then, reconnect the old C drive, but make sure to set the drive jumpers so that your system will recognize the old one as a slave (or put it on the 2nd IDE bus.) When Windows detects two OS formatted drives as C, the one that is lower physicaly priority (slaved on IDE 1, or either position on IDE2) will be re-lettered to the first available letter. Once it is not booted up as the OS drive, you can easily re-letter it to whatever you want using the procedure MediaMan indicated above.

    Dexter...
  • GargGarg Purveyor of Lincoln Nightmares Icrontian
    edited November 2004
    Well, I guess I need to reinstall Windows then. I anticipated this problem, and I set the Windows drive to Master, but it still made it the F drive. It wasn't at the end of the IDE cable, but I thought that setting it to Master would have been enough. Also weird that it placed it after the CD-ROMs in letter order. Freaky Windows...

    Thanks guys. :thumbsup:
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