Drive Letter Problem

[Fruit2O]

I have one physical drive with two logical drives on it. Both use the
identical version of WinXP Pro. I recently cloned an 80GB version of
this drive to a 120GB version. It used to be that, on my primary
drive, C: was the boot drive and E: was what I called my Utility drive.
When I use Computer Management>Disk Management, C: shows up as my
primary drive and E: shows up as my Utility Drive (which is as it
should be). This is on my new 120GB drive. When I boot into the E:
drive, the Primary drive (boot drive) shows up as D: and I can't change
it to C: because I get a message which says I can't change the letter
of a boot drive. Can someone tell me how to fix this? Thanks........

 

[Raymond J. Johnson Jr.]

I have one physical drive with two logical drives on it. Both use the
identical version of WinXP Pro. I recently cloned an 80GB version of
this drive to a 120GB version. It used to be that, on my primary
drive, C: was the boot drive and E: was what I called my Utility drive.
When I use Computer Management>Disk Management, C: shows up as my
primary drive and E: shows up as my Utility Drive (which is as it
should be). This is on my new 120GB drive. When I boot into the E:
drive, the Primary drive (boot drive) shows up as D: and I can't change
it to C: because I get a message which says I can't change the letter
of a boot drive. Can someone tell me how to fix this? Thanks........

You can't have two C: drives.

 

[Fruit2O]

You can't have two C: drives.

Sorry to disagree, but when I had two logical drives on my hard drive,
I also had two C: drives - one on each logical drive. In other words,
I have a dual boot system. In any case, I have had two C: drives on my
hard drive for years. There must be a way to resolve this issue since
I got myself into it in the first place.

 

[Fruit2O]

I have one physical drive with two logical drives on it. Both use the
identical version of WinXP Pro. I recently cloned an 80GB version of
this drive to a 120GB version. It used to be that, on my primary
drive, C: was the boot drive and E: was what I called my Utility drive.
When I use Computer Management>Disk Management, C: shows up as my
primary drive and E: shows up as my Utility Drive (which is as it
should be). This is on my new 120GB drive. When I boot into the E:
drive, the Primary drive (boot drive) shows up as D: and I can't change
it to C: because I get a message which says I can't change the letter
of a boot drive. Can someone tell me how to fix this? Thanks........

Perhaps I didn't explain this problem adequately and I apologise - so
here goes again:

 

[John John]

Perhaps I didn't explain this problem adequately and I apologise - so
here goes again:

You cannot change the boot volume drive letter, you have to reinstall
Windows if you want to do that.

John

 

[Fruit2O]

I have one physical drive with two logical drives on it. Both use the
identical version of WinXP Pro. I recently cloned an 80GB version of
this drive to a 120GB version. It used to be that, on my primary
drive, C: was the boot drive and E: was what I called my Utility drive.
When I use Computer Management>Disk Management, C: shows up as my
primary drive and E: shows up as my Utility Drive (which is as it
should be). This is on my new 120GB drive. When I boot into the E:
drive, the Primary drive (boot drive) shows up as D: and I can't change
it to C: because I get a message which says I can't change the letter
of a boot drive. Can someone tell me how to fix this? Thanks........

Gentlemen, please look up the article
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223188

and tell me what you think (if it applies to me). Thanks........

 

[John John]

Gentlemen, please look up the article
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223188

and tell me what you think (if it applies to me). Thanks........

Your post is difficult to understand. Do you still have the old drive
in the computer? Is it the drive letters on the old drive that changed?
If yes then do the proceedure in the article. If you are talking
about the new drive then I am not sure what you mean because you say
that all is okay with the cloning operation and that the results are as
expected. Then you talk of booting to the E drive... where does that
come from?

When refering to multiple disks and partitions please identify the disks
and partitions by numbers. The first hard disk is always disk 0 (zero)
the other one will be disk 1. The partitions always start at number 1.
Drive letters really mean next to nothing and we have no idea what
disk and partition you are reffering to when you speak of drives E and
D, they could be on any of your disks. The drive letters should be
qualified with the disk and partition numbers so that we have an idea of
the disk and partition layout in your computer.

John

PS: If you change the drive letter when you shouldn't have the computer
will probably go into a reboot loop at restart. If you have 2 Windows
installations on your computer you can boot to the other installation
and use Regedit to load the System hive of the non booting installation
and reverse the changes.

 

[Fruit2O]

Your post is difficult to understand. Do you still have the old drive
in the computer? Is it the drive letters on the old drive that changed?
If yes then do the proceedure in the article. If you are talking
about the new drive then I am not sure what you mean because you say
that all is okay with the cloning operation and that the results are as
expected. Then you talk of booting to the E drive... where does that
come from?

When refering to multiple disks and partitions please identify the disks
and partitions by numbers. The first hard disk is always disk 0 (zero)
the other one will be disk 1. The partitions always start at number 1.
Drive letters really mean next to nothing and we have no idea what
disk and partition you are reffering to when you speak of drives E and
D, they could be on any of your disks. The drive letters should be
qualified with the disk and partition numbers so that we have an idea of
the disk and partition layout in your computer.

John

OK, I'll take another look at the details tomorrow and send them with
this thread. Thanks for sticking with me.

 

[John]

I have one physical drive with two logical drives on it. Both use the
identical version of WinXP Pro. I recently cloned an 80GB version of
this drive to a 120GB version. It used to be that, on my primary
drive, C: was the boot drive and E: was what I called my Utility drive.
When I use Computer Management>Disk Management, C: shows up as my
primary drive and E: shows up as my Utility Drive (which is as it
should be). This is on my new 120GB drive. When I boot into the E:
drive, the Primary drive (boot drive) shows up as D: and I can't change
it to C: because I get a message which says I can't change the letter
of a boot drive. Can someone tell me how to fix this? Thanks........

You must have two drives installed, not one, because Windows can't boot
strap (system volume) from a logical drive. The reason things changed is
probably due to leaving the old drive connected when you first booted
the new drive. Do the clone again and this time physically disconnect
the old drive *before* booting the new drive for the first time. Also be
sure that your cloning software makes the system partition (where
boot.ini resides) on the new drive the active partition and that its a
primary partition and not a logical. The second partition can be an
extended with logical(s) within but not the (active) system partition.
You would think that *cloning* software would do this automagically when
cloning one hard drive to another but thats what you need.

If later on you want to reuse the old drive in the same comp for data
storage or whatever it would be best to either set your BIOS to boot
from the new drive *before* the old drive in its list of bootable
devices or change the cabling just before you boot the cloned drive for
the first time to ensure that the BIOS sees the new drive first in place
of the old or you may end up with more confusion when you reconnect an
additional bootable device containing an active partition, boot files
and a live operating system.


John

 

[Fruit2O]

Thanks for all the information - much appreciated. Sorry for the delay
in responding. Illness. I should have mentioned that I'm using a
laptop.