Drive letter ?

[BChat]

If I use Disk Management to change the drive letter of a disk from say "I"
to "D", will all the program shortcuts on the drive change also, so
essentially drive "I" is now drive "D"

The reason I am asking:

I have Vista HP 32 on my 4th HD - "I"
Using Acronis True Image, I want to put an image of "I" onto my 2nd HD "D",
then format "I" for storage.
Will all the references to "I" in the image change to "D" when placed on the
2nd HD?
OR
Should I just make the 2nd HD "I", format the 4th HD and make it "D"

now have
C: drive 1 - Ultimate 64 bit
D: drive 2 - empty simple volume**
G: drive 3 - storage
I: drive 4 - Home Premium 32 bit

would like to have
C: drive 1 - Ultimate 64 bit
D: drive 2 - Home Premium 32 bit
G: drive 3 - storage
I: drive 4 - storage

E: and F: are DVD drives
H: is the card reader in printer

**do I need to make this an active volume before I pit an image on it?
If so, how? I had to do it a while ago, I forgot.


Any suggestions on how to best accomplish this appreciated.

Thanks
BChat

OK, I've used up my November questions allotment

 

[Cari \(MS-MVP\)]

The registry won't know, so you'd have to reinstall all of the programs
again.

 

[CH]

Hi BChat--

With all respect due to everyone:

I recently did this and did not have to install one program. I haven't
bothered to check reg values or subkeys in hives because I haven't had the
need. This was on a dual boot box where I have two HDs installed, running
Vista and one partition where I'm running Windows 7.

I have noticed that if you change the drive letter, the programs will always
come up flawlessly via their shortcuts be they on the Vista desktop, or
Start Menu or All Programs Menu.

That would cause me to give the answer to your question a Resounding "Yes."
I'm spinning them up as I type this and they are all springing up as they
have been for months.

However, in a different situation, but I think worth pointing out, if you
have programs on an external Hard Drive, and that external HD corrupts, you
will find that programs will certainly no longer work, and you'll of course
get an error message that says the drive cannot be located.

I would add for what it's worth, that early on, I got the bright idea that I
would try to copy programs from one drive to another to take a shortcut in
installing them. That, as thousands would be quick to point out, will not
work for a number of large programs like Office. I have even been able to
repair Office briefly using the repair modality that came with the Office
version, but that repair only held up transiently. A number of programs
did copy correctly, but I don't recommend doing this, don't try it anymore
(of course the registry entries will be altered in this situation for many
programs, and it was
obviously a foolish early mistake and far from "best practices." But that's
not your situation; I just point it out.

On the other hand, although you can use Foldershare and Live Mesh to
communicate between different boxes in your environment at home, and Mesh is
still a work in progress for a while as to its communication with PDAs and
Iphones/Itouches (foldershare works on them though), I often transfer
programs from my laptop to my desktop by copying them to a thumb drive on my
laptop or desktop, and then copying them to the desktop or wherever on other
boxes, and that works just fine.

I recommend you go on and change the drive letter. Set a restore point if
you like, but I've done it on two boxes and I had to do nothing to make the
programs respond and open up perfectly.

Good luck,

CH

 

[CH]

B Chat--

I would like to refine one statement I made. What I copy on thumbs from one
box to another are setups for a program from download files. I don't
attempt to copy the installed program on a thumb from one box to another for
the same reasons that many programs will not copy well from one drive to
another although you can certainly chose to install a program to whichever
drive on a box if you get that option(and 95% of the time you do). If you
copy a setup (executable or whichever form it takes) to a thumb and then to
another pc's desktop or a given folder, that will work but I wouldn't of
course try to copy an installed program because some will corrupt and the
registry entries there won't be correct or complete as a guarantee.

You can always set a restore point, or you have the option and I'm looking
at it this moment, of right clicking any of your drives and changing the
letter back or yet again.

But you're not going to need to.

Good luck,

CH

 

[Earle Horton]

Disk Management won't let you change the drive letter of the boot or system
volume. I just tried it, and it says, "Windows cannot modify the drive
letter of your volume. This may happen if your volume is a system or boot
volume, or has page files."

When you boot 32-bit Vista, does it come up on drive "I" or on drive "C"?
If you change the drive letters from within your Ultimate 64-bit system, it
won't/shouldn't affect how these drives are seen in your 32-bit system.

There needs to be only one active volume in your entire system. This is the
actual boot volume, that contains the Vista Boot Manager code and database.
This is probably your current "C" drive. If you copy your "I" drive to your
"C" drive, then don't forget to define a Boot Manager entry for it. If it
doesn't boot the way you expected, then you could physically swap drives 2
and 4.

Cheers,

Earle

 

[Earle Horton]

I meant copy your "I" drive to your "D" drive, but hopefully you already
figured that out.

Earle

 

[Chad Harris]

Earle--

You are of course right that it won't and that's what the OP wanted to do.
I haven't encountered any problems with programs however, changing other
drive letters.

Thanks for pointing this out. I should have caught that was the OP
question..

CH

 

[BChat]

CH,

Thanks for your reply - my experience has been less than good ;-)
I formatted drive 2 - D
I placed an image of Drive 4 I onto it.
I checked all the shortcuts and all still showed I in their properties
except for Windows Explore, that switched to D.
All the programs opened - but apparently from I, because when I formatted I
nothing worked.
I decided this idea was not going well,
put the drive 4 I image back where it belonged and now have
Vista Ultimate 64 on drive 1, C, as original and
Windows 7 32 bit (I posted Vista 32 in OP - my bad) on drive 4 I, as
original
- all seems OK.

I suppose IF I used the I image and changed Drive 2, D, to I
- all would be well EXCEPT then I'd have:
Drive 1 C
Drive 2 I
Drive 3 G
Drive 4 D

My compulsive, obsessive, neurotic, psychotic, and slightly flaky
personality
would never allow that to exist for more than 1.7638 seconds.

I'm not sure I've ever placed an image from one drive to another and had it
work.
Lord knows I have tired enough times.

Thanks again for your reply.
Good news is I have an empty D drive waiting for the public beta of Windows
7.

BChat



Hi BChat--

With all respect due to everyone:

I recently did this and did not have to install one program. I haven't
bothered to check reg values or subkeys in hives because I haven't had the
need. This was on a dual boot box where I have two HDs installed, running
Vista and one partition where I'm running Windows 7.

I have noticed that if you change the drive letter, the programs will always
come up flawlessly via their shortcuts be they on the Vista desktop, or
Start Menu or All Programs Menu.

That would cause me to give the answer to your question a Resounding "Yes."
I'm spinning them up as I type this and they are all springing up as they
have been for months.

However, in a different situation, but I think worth pointing out, if you
have programs on an external Hard Drive, and that external HD corrupts, you
will find that programs will certainly no longer work, and you'll of course
get an error message that says the drive cannot be located.

I would add for what it's worth, that early on, I got the bright idea that I
would try to copy programs from one drive to another to take a shortcut in
installing them. That, as thousands would be quick to point out, will not
work for a number of large programs like Office. I have even been able to
repair Office briefly using the repair modality that came with the Office
version, but that repair only held up transiently. A number of programs
did copy correctly, but I don't recommend doing this, don't try it anymore
(of course the registry entries will be altered in this situation for many
programs, and it was
obviously a foolish early mistake and far from "best practices." But that's
not your situation; I just point it out.

On the other hand, although you can use Foldershare and Live Mesh to
communicate between different boxes in your environment at home, and Mesh is
still a work in progress for a while as to its communication with PDAs and
Iphones/Itouches (foldershare works on them though), I often transfer
programs from my laptop to my desktop by copying them to a thumb drive on my
laptop or desktop, and then copying them to the desktop or wherever on other
boxes, and that works just fine.

I recommend you go on and change the drive letter. Set a restore point if
you like, but I've done it on two boxes and I had to do nothing to make the
programs respond and open up perfectly.

Good luck,

CH

 

[John Barnes]

Looks like you answered your own question. Good luck.

 

[Chad Harris]

1) As Earl said, (and I apologize for not paying attention that was what
you had wanted to do and it was your system drive), you can't change dirve
letter of the system drive.
2) You can change other drive letters via diskmgmt.msc in the run box, and
that I have not found to be problematic in the least.
3) If you install Vista on a dual boot from another OS on another partition,
your drive letters will be the next sequential drive for the Vista boot.
But if you restart and install Vista on a dual boot the Bios will assign the
drive letters and the System Drive will be C:\ on the subsequently installed
OS.
4) You can access the desktop of any of the OS's on a dual or multiboot
system by using the appropriate file path, saving time and avoiding that
when you boot to the other OS your System Restore points won't be retained.

Good luck,

CH

 

[BChat]

Chad,

The problem seems to be, as best as I can describe it, that I took an image
of Drive 4, "I" and put it onto drive 2 "D".
So all the shortcuts had "I" in their path selection, even though they were
on "D" - with the one exception being Windows Explore, it showed D.
As I stated elsewhere, I'm not sure one, or maybe it is just me, can move an
image from one drive to another and expect it to work.
FWIW, these are Acronis TI Home 2009 images and separate HDs.

I have been fooling around with this nonsense ever since I first added Vista
beta to my 2nd HD. Just learning the concept of dual booting took some time,
I believe you helped me a great deal back in the summer of "Vista Beta", a
few years ago.

I'd probably be OK if I could adapt to the "If it works, don't fix it"
theory.
I tend to think there is always at least one more tweak to be had.....

Thanks for the reply,

BChat

1) As Earl said, (and I apologize for not paying attention that was what
you had wanted to do and it was your system drive), you can't change dirve
letter of the system drive.
2) You can change other drive letters via diskmgmt.msc in the run box, and
that I have not found to be problematic in the least.
3) If you install Vista on a dual boot from another OS on another partition,
your drive letters will be the next sequential drive for the Vista boot.
But if you restart and install Vista on a dual boot the Bios will assign the
drive letters and the System Drive will be C:\ on the subsequently installed
OS.
4) You can access the desktop of any of the OS's on a dual or multiboot
system by using the appropriate file path, saving time and avoiding that
when you boot to the other OS your System Restore points won't be retained.

Good luck,

CH

 

[Earle Horton]

Most modern motherboards allow BIOS setup to specify which drive is the boot
drive. This is much handier than what you are trying to do. Go into BIOS
setup, make drive 1 the boot drive, install an operating system. Go into
BIOS setup, make drive 2 the boot drive, install an operating system.
Repeat until you have all the operating systems you want. Use BIOS setup to
switch between them. If you do that then copying operating systems between
drives is a no brainer, because any place you boot from is "C". And you
don't have to learn how XP, Vista or Linux addresses the dual booting issue.

Earle

 

[Snidley W.]

Most modern motherboards allow BIOS setup to specify which drive is the boot
drive. This is much handier than what you are trying to do. Go into BIOS
setup, make drive 1 the boot drive, install an operating system. Go into
BIOS setup, make drive 2 the boot drive, install an operating system.
Repeat until you have all the operating systems you want. Use BIOS setup to
switch between them.

It works a LOT better if the drive with the existing OS is
disconnected before installing an OS on another drive. Boot to that
drive to get it all setup, disconnect it and install on the next. Boot
that drive, etc. When complete, connect all drives and set the boot
order in the BIOS.

Been there, done that... but it's easier for me because I have my boot
drives in drive caddies.