Changing Drive Letters

B

Bill Wittmer

I just replaced my master hard drive. I have a second hard drive that had
been installed a while back that was designated as a slave drive. I
proceeded to reinstall Windows XP Pro on the new master drive. Yhe drive
was pinned for master. When finished I found that the drive the system was
now installed was designated as "K". The partitions on the slave drive were
listed as C, D, E, F, G and H with the DVD burner and ROM listed as I and J.
I wanted to reorganize my drives and partition the new drive. I went to
"Disk Management" and tried to change the drive letters, I made C through G
available by designating the slave drive partitions as R through W. When I
tried to Change the new hard drive to "C", I received the message; "Windows
cannnot modify the drive letter of your System Volume or Boot Volume".
Since I do a lot of work within Windows Explorer, I like to have the master
drive partions listed fisrt with the system volume have the letter "C" and
the other newly created partion with succeeding letters and the slave drive,
which arhives my files to have the letters towards the end of the alphabet.
If worst comes to worst, I can start with the letter "K" and work upward.
However, I am hoping someone might have a solution as to how I can disignate
the System volume in the new hard drive as "C". Any help with be greatly
appreciated.

Regards,
Bill
 
G

Guest

Bill,
I think that you have a conflict with both drives having the jumper pin set
to "Master". Open the case and unplug the old drive. Move the pin on the NEW
drive to the "CS" (or cable select") position. Remove the jumper pin on the
back of the old drive. Also, make sure that the old drive is the 2nd drive is
inline on the ribbon cable. Reboot, and it should show your new drive as the
default (C:). You can then go in and change the Aux drive to what ever
letters you want.

Mack
 
B

Bill Wittmer

Mack,

Thanks for your response and information. However, I tried it and the
System Volume will not allow me to change the Drive letter from K to C.
Further, when I set the primary drive to "cable Select" and remove the
jumper pin from the second drive I got a "Boot Failure" error. The system
would not boot. I tried booting with just the primary drive connected set
to "Master" and then to "Drive Select" and I was not allowed to change the
drive letter on the System Volume. I either had to have on drive as Master
and One as Slave to boot or both set to "Drive Select" to boot. Neither
situation allowed me to change the K drive to C. I will wait to see if
there are any more suggestions. If not I will go with plan B and start my
drive lettering at the letter K

Thanks,
Bill
 
G

Guest

Another idea:
I'm assuming that the drives are in the right order on the ribbon cable. Set
the jumper pin on your primary drive to "Master" and remove the pin
altogether from your slave drive. At this point (if it'll boot up), while
it's booting, go into safemode and see if the boot priority settings have
been changed. Make the primary disk the CD-ROM the first device in the boot
priority order, followed by floppy and then the new hard drive (if you see
the brand name listed...). You can also remove both jumper pins altogether
and the system should automatically go into "Cable Select" mode when
searching for devices.

Let me know what happens. I'm curious...
Mack
 
B

Bill Wittmer

Mack,
I am thinking you meant "boot to the Bios Setup" rather than "Safe
Mode". The priority settings did change and I change them to make the
Computer look to the CD-ROM first then the Hard Drive. My new drive is a
Maxtor and the secondary drive is a Western-digital. I can not get the
computer to boot if I set the jumpers on the Maxtor to Cable-Select and
remove the jumper from the secondary drive. I get a boot failure error and
the system just does not boot up. I tried going to the Device Manager and
uninstalling the second drive and rebooting with no luck. Even when I
remove the cables from the second drive and boot up, the system still shows
the Maxtor drive as "K" and will not let me change the drive letter on
the"System Drive". It is a miserable rainy weekend were I am so I will
probably disconnect the second drive and reinstall Windows XP and that is
after I wipe the drive to avoid any potential problems. I thinking that
when I had reinstalled Windows XP with the new hard drive installed, I had
installed about a dozen programs. These programs all made associations with
the "K" drive in the registry and that is keeping me from changing the drive
letter. I appreciate your help. Thank you.

Regards,
Bill
 
A

Anna

Bill Wittmer said:
Mack,
I am thinking you meant "boot to the Bios Setup" rather than "Safe
Mode". The priority settings did change and I change them to make the
Computer look to the CD-ROM first then the Hard Drive. My new drive is a
Maxtor and the secondary drive is a Western-digital. I can not get the
computer to boot if I set the jumpers on the Maxtor to Cable-Select and
remove the jumper from the secondary drive. I get a boot failure error
and the system just does not boot up. I tried going to the Device Manager
and uninstalling the second drive and rebooting with no luck. Even when I
remove the cables from the second drive and boot up, the system still
shows the Maxtor drive as "K" and will not let me change the drive letter
on the"System Drive". It is a miserable rainy weekend were I am so I will
probably disconnect the second drive and reinstall Windows XP and that is
after I wipe the drive to avoid any potential problems. I thinking that
when I had reinstalled Windows XP with the new hard drive installed, I had
installed about a dozen programs. These programs all made associations
with the "K" drive in the registry and that is keeping me from changing
the drive letter. I appreciate your help. Thank you.
Regards,
Bill


Bill:
A couple of questions...

1. Re the "master hard drive" that you replaced...
Was that your boot HD at the time it was working (before it was replaced)
and was it designated the C: drive at the time?

2. Re your "slave drive"...
You say the partitions on that drive are designated, C, D, E, F, G, and H.
Were those drive (partition) assignments present originally or did they
change *after* you installed your new HD and installed the XP OS?

3. If you disconnect your new Maxtor HD and boot to your WD "slave drive",
what happens?
Anna
 
B

Bill Wittmer

Anna,
The master hard drive that was replaced was working. I opted to
replace it with a larger hard drive. Yes, the system drive was designated
as "C" on the old hard drive. The partitions C, D, E, F, G were had been
used by the old hard drive that had been the "Master". The partition on the
slave drive had been J,K, L, M, N, and O, with H and I used by the DVD
drives. I am unable to boot to the "slave drive" in that it contains no
operating system. If I disconnect the slave and boot to the Master (Maxtor)
the system will not revert to the lower letter for the drive designation.
It will keep "K" and not all me to change it, even though no other hard
drive is connected.

Bill
 
A

Anna

Bill Wittmer said:
Anna,
The master hard drive that was replaced was working. I opted to
replace it with a larger hard drive. Yes, the system drive was designated
as "C" on the old hard drive. The partitions C, D, E, F, G were had been
used by the old hard drive that had been the "Master". The partition on
the slave drive had been J,K, L, M, N, and O, with H and I used by the DVD
drives. I am unable to boot to the "slave drive" in that it contains no
operating system. If I disconnect the slave and boot to the Master
(Maxtor) the system will not revert to the lower letter for the drive
designation. It will keep "K" and not all me to change it, even though no
other hard drive is connected.

Bill


Bill:
Apparently what happened is that when you installed XP on your new HD, your
secondary HD was still connected. It's usually advisable to disconnect all
storage devices when making a fresh install of the XP OS. Consequently, the
system re:blush:rdered the drive letter assignments although I'm not quite clear
why that C: drive letter assignment was made on a non-system (boot)
partition on your secondary HD.

(Note your IDE data cable connections (master, slave) have no bearing on
this problem).

Take a look at this MS KB article on restoring the system/boot drive
letter...
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;223188#2
It just might work in this case.

If not, the only alternative I see is to make another fresh install of XP on
your new HD *without* any other HD connected. Hopefully that drive will then
be designated the C: drive and when you subsequently connect your secondary
HD, you can then use Disk Management to make any drive letter assignment
changes re that secondary HD and/or your optical drives.

As a side note - do you really need to have that many partitions on your
hard drives?
Anna
 
B

Bill Wittmer

Anna,
Thanks for responding and the information. I agree that the best option
will be a fresh install. With the number of file associations that have
already been made, change the system drive letter will definitely lead to
problems.

Bill
 
S

Six Underground

As a side note - do you really need to have that many partitions on your
hard drives?
Anna

What difference does it make with reference to his dilemna? He should
be able to have as many partitions as he wants or needs, regardless of
his reasoning behind having them.

6U
 
A

Anna

Six Underground said:
What difference does it make with reference to his dilemna? He should
be able to have as many partitions as he wants or needs, regardless of
his reasoning behind having them.

6U


Well, as I stated, it was only a "side note" which I primarily asked out of
curiosity since the OP had multi-partitioned his HD with six (6) partitions.
And while it would seem that the rather substantial number of partitions
should have no bearing on his problem it's interesting to note that in our
experience over the years there seems to be a rather direct relationship
between the number of problems encountered by a PC user that's coupled with
the number of partitions on his or her HD, i.e., the greater the number of
partitions, the greater the number of problems. (This is said with something
of a "tongue-in-cheek" attitude, so please do not get too exercised over
it.)

Anyway, as you may have noted from my *complete* response to the OP, I did
try (successfully or not) to give him some insight into his problem and did
recommend a course of action (accurate or not) for him to undertake. Would
you have any other suggestions that you could furnish the OP?
Anna
 

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