Changing Drive Letters In XP Pro

[Mick Beeby]

Is there any easy way to change the allocation of drive letters in XP Pro?

I did an upgrade from Win98 SE and I used to have the following:-

C: 20Gb Boot Hard Drive
D: 60Gb Data Hard Drive
E: 120Gb Programs Hard Drive (Installation File for Apps & Drivers etc)
F: 120Gb Media Hard Drive (Video and Audio)
G: CD-RW Drive
H: DVD+/-RW

Since the upgrade it has assigned letters thus:-

C: 20Gb Boot Hard Drive
D: 60Gb Data Hard Drive
E: DVD+/-RW
F: 120Gb Programs Hard Drive
G: CD-RW Drive
H: 120Gb Media Hard Drive

In Win98 SE you could alter the drive letters assigned in the Hardware
Manager. You can't do this in XP Pro. I would like to get back to a more
logical allocation of drive letters.

Can anyone shed some light? Registry hack perhaps?

Thanks

Mick

 

[Alvin A Brown]

Hello

Give the link below a try

Setup for re-assigning driver letters
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;223188

Alvin

 

[Mike Hall]

Go to Settings - Control Panel - accessories - system tools - administartive
tools - computer management - storage - disk management.. right click on the
volume to change.. you will of course have to free up the letters that you
want to re-use before re-allocation

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Mick.

As Mike Hall said, Disk Management is the tool to use in WinXP. It replaces
several programs that we grew to know (and love?) in MS-DOS and Win9x/ME.
Disk Management now creates and deletes partitions (which we used to do with
FDISK) and formats them (which we did with Format.exe). It also assigns and
reassigns drive letters, which we used to do with Device Manager. There is
an excellent Help file available from Disk Management which explains many
things about hard drives and file systems. (One quick way to start Disk
Management is to type at the Run prompt: diskmgmt.msc)

WinXP (like other operating systems) has a built-in algorithm for assigning
"drive" letters to primary partitions, logical drives in extended
partitions, CD/DVD drives, network drives, etc. Left to its own devices,
WinXP will assign letters from scratch each time it reboots, depending on
the hardware configuration that it finds at that time, so adding or removing
drives or partitions can cause shifting of the letters. Disk Management
lets us choose our own letter assignments and uses those on future reboots.
As with DOS and Win9x/ME, the System Partition (almost always Drive C and
the Boot Volume (where we keep the boot folder, usually \Windows; this may
or may not also be C cannot be easily changed, but the other letters can
be shuffled to suit our own tastes. I like to keep my CD/DVD drive letters
at some distance from my HD volume letters, so that they don't change when I
add a new HD, but that is a matter of personal preference. (My DVD is V:
and the CD\RW is W:.)

RC

 

[Mick Beeby]

Excellent. Have re-done all the letter assignments using the Disk Management
Tool.

Many thanks

Mick

 

[Mike Hall]

You're welcome

 

[Edward J Martin]

Hi, Mick.

As Mike Hall said, Disk Management is the tool to use in WinXP. It replaces
several programs that we grew to know (and love?) in MS-DOS and Win9x/ME.
Disk Management now creates and deletes partitions (which we used to do with
FDISK) and formats them (which we did with Format.exe). It also assigns and
reassigns drive letters, which we used to do with Device Manager. There is
an excellent Help file available from Disk Management which explains many
things about hard drives and file systems. (One quick way to start Disk
Management is to type at the Run prompt: diskmgmt.msc)

WinXP (like other operating systems) has a built-in algorithm for assigning
"drive" letters to primary partitions, logical drives in extended
partitions, CD/DVD drives, network drives, etc. Left to its own devices,
WinXP will assign letters from scratch each time it reboots, depending on
the hardware configuration that it finds at that time, so adding or removing
drives or partitions can cause shifting of the letters. Disk Management
lets us choose our own letter assignments and uses those on future reboots.
As with DOS and Win9x/ME, the System Partition (almost always Drive C and
the Boot Volume (where we keep the boot folder, usually \Windows; this may
or may not also be C cannot be easily changed, but the other letters can
be shuffled to suit our own tastes. I like to keep my CD/DVD drive letters
at some distance from my HD volume letters, so that they don't change when I
add a new HD, but that is a matter of personal preference. (My DVD is V:
and the CD\RW is W:.)

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP

I have both a conventional floppy and a LS120 disk drive in my system. When
I upraded to Win XP from Win2K the operating system reversed the drive
letters. The floppy became 'B' and the LS120 became 'A'. Not an enormous
problem. However for some time now I've been wondering how to reverse the
drive letters back to where they were under Win 2K. The disk management tool
does not work with LS120 or floppy drives. The tip and pointer to the
knowledge base article from Alvin A Brown does the trick. Using the
information from the knowledge base article I've now switched both drives
back to their former positions.

Many thanks to Alvin A Brown.