want to change drive letter of old C drive

maxwelltfmaxwelltf
edited March 2009 in Science & Tech
I have a laptop. I recently replaced the c drive with a larger one. Now I have the old C drive and want to use it as a secondary external drive. I do not want to format it, at least not right now. Problem: the old drive is still labeled C. When I connect it via an external USB enclosure, it seems to stall the laptop. Presumable b/c there are two C drives. How can I change this drive letter of this old external drive to something like E or F. Note: when connected, the old C drive connected via USB does not come up in the Disk Management system tool. Seatools from Seagate sees it, but windows does not. Any ideas?

Comments

  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited March 2009
    Do you boot up the laptop into Windows before turning on/connecting the external drive? Once the computer is running off the OS on your internal, new C:\ drive, it shouldn't matter what the external partitions are named.

    You could try turning off "mass storage device" in the BIOS. You could also try Safe Mode. If that doesn't work, hook up your external drive another computer.
  • maxwelltfmaxwelltf
    edited March 2009
    Leonardo wrote:
    Do you boot up the laptop into Windows before turning on/connecting the external drive? Once the computer is running off the OS on your internal, new C:\ drive, it shouldn't matter what the external partitions are named.

    You could try turning off "mass storage device" in the BIOS. You could also try Safe Mode. If that doesn't work, hook up your external drive another computer.


    Yes I do connect the old C drive after the laptop has booted. I have tried this with my desktop PC as well and have the same issues. When I put the old C drive back into the laptop, it boots off the old C just fine. But when it is connected via external drive, and the system is booted off the new C drive, the system doesnt see the old C drive. It's not a problem with the external drive enclosure since it works fine when I use it to connect other drives externally to the system and the system sees them just fine - but they were never named C drive. It's this particular old C drive that the problem occurs. I will try booting into safe mode then connecting the old C drive externally and let you know what happens.
  • maxwelltfmaxwelltf
    edited March 2009
    Same problem when booting into safe mode and connecting the old C drive. The system does not recognize it, probably in this case because the USB card is not active and this is how the external drive is connected. Hmmmm. This whole thing is rather strange.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited March 2009
    Does disk management recognize the external?

    The problem with some of the assumptions being tossed about is that the hard drive has no knowledge of what drive letter it is. That information is not stored on the drive. That information is stored in the registry. Drive letters are chosen from high to low like this:

    Partition flagged as active w/ MBR > another hard disk > optical devices > partitions > external devices. That's the natural order unless you change it, but none of this information is coded to the HDD.

    I'm thinking that the drive just hasn't been activated in start -> run -> diskmgmt.msc. Be sure to hit "initialize disk," and it will be assigned a drive letter at the end of the chain.
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