Changing drive letters in XP

[Daniel Prince]

I am trying to upgrade to a bigger drive. The old drive has nine
logical drives on it, C (windows 98 SE), D (Windows XP SP2) through
K. I have another old drive with logical drives L and M. All the
partitions on the old drives are fat 32.

I set up the new drive with three logical drives. I installed the
new drive on a different controller than the old drive and copied
the files to it. When I remove the old drives and booted Windows
XP, the new drive has drive letters of D, N and P. I VERY much do
NOT want this.

I want the first partition (now N the system partition) to be C. Is
there a way to change this partition to C? Windows XP's Disk
Management program refuses to change it because it is a system
partition. Thank you in advance for all replies.

 

[pctech]

I'm trying to get a laptop in time for church camp summer job. Please
help if you can by using my referal link:
http://www.pctech4free.com/def­ault.aspx?ref=59054

Thanks in advance.

 

[Mike Hall \(MS-MVP\)]

You could at least have the decency to create a new post..

--
Mike Hall
MVP - Windows Shell/user







I'm trying to get a laptop in time for church camp summer job. Please
help if you can by using my referal link:
http://www.pctech4free.com/def­ault.aspx?ref=59054

Thanks in advance.

 

[Gary L.]

I am trying to upgrade to a bigger drive. The old drive has nine
logical drives on it, C (windows 98 SE), D (Windows XP SP2) through
K. I have another old drive with logical drives L and M. All the
partitions on the old drives are fat 32.

I set up the new drive with three logical drives. I installed the
new drive on a different controller than the old drive and copied
the files to it. When I remove the old drives and booted Windows
XP, the new drive has drive letters of D, N and P. I VERY much do
NOT want this.

I want the first partition (now N the system partition) to be C. Is
there a way to change this partition to C? Windows XP's Disk
Management program refuses to change it because it is a system
partition. Thank you in advance for all replies.

If you change the drive letter of the system partition to something
else, it will cause a lot of problems. A lot of system settings are
now pointing to N: as the system drive and things will not work
properly if the system drive letter is changed to C:. You can change
the letter of the other drives using Disk Manager without any problem.

The fastest way to fix this problem is to back up all your data and
simply erase the new drive and install XP from scratch without any
other drives in the system. Boot from the install CD and remove all
partitions and then start again. This will take less time than trying
to fix the mess from re-lettering. Also, there is no need at all for
all of those logical partitions using a modern file system like NTFS.
One big NTFS partition per physical hard disk works just fine.
- -
Gary L.
Reply to the newsgroup only

 

[Rod Speed]

If you change the drive letter of the system partition to something
else, it will cause a lot of problems. A lot of system settings are
now pointing to N: as the system drive and things will not work
properly if the system drive letter is changed to C:. You can change
the letter of the other drives using Disk Manager without any problem.

The fastest way to fix this problem is to back up all your data

Best to use the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard if you're going to go this
route.

 

[Eric Gisin]

Start over. Copying files rarely works 100%. Clone the drive instead.

If you change the drive letter of the system partition to something
else, it will cause a lot of problems. A lot of system settings are
now pointing to N: as the system drive and things will not work
properly if the system drive letter is changed to C:. You can change
the letter of the other drives using Disk Manager without any problem.

Bullshit. He has to get the system drive back to C or D, because that's what
setup originally found.

The fastest way to fix this problem is to back up all your data and
simply erase the new drive and install XP from scratch without any
other drives in the system. Boot from the install CD and remove all
partitions and then start again. This will take less time than trying
to fix the mess from re-lettering. Also, there is no need at all for
all of those logical partitions using a modern file system like NTFS.
One big NTFS partition per physical hard disk works just fine.

Nonsense, no need to reinstall. The fastest way it simply use the drive cloning
software available for his new drive.

If the OP does start over, he should have FAT32 for Win98, NTFS for XP, and
FAT32 for data.

 

[Daniel Prince]

Start over. Copying files rarely works 100%. Clone the drive instead.

I have never used any drive cloning software. Are there any good
freeware drive cloning programs? Are there any good shareware drive
cloning programs?

 

[Rod Speed]

I have never used any drive cloning software. Are
there any good freeware drive cloning programs?

No point when Ghost 2003 as part of SystemWorks
Pro 2003 costs peanuts, literally, on ebay.

Are there any good shareware drive cloning programs?

See above.

 

[gangals]

This is how you REALLY DO IT!!!!

In XP
First off go to
[b:46ab942142]control panel[/b:46ab942142]
[b:46ab942142]Administrative Tools[/b:46ab942142]
[b:46ab942142]Computer Management[/b:46ab942142]
under Storage go to
[b:46ab942142]Disk Management[/b:46ab942142]

You should be able to see all of your drives there, when you right
click on them, on the options is to [b:46ab942142]Change Drive
Letter and Paths[/b:46ab942142]
From here you can change your existing drives to whatever you want.
One thing though, you may not me able to change your drive that you
boot from

 

[perrin]

Yup, that's why my boot drive is now F:

: This is how you REALLY DO IT!!!!
:
: One thing though, you may not me able to change your drive that you
: boot from
: