Drive replacement, letter assignment

[John Bendel]

I've run out of room, almost, and I need to install a new
second drive.

Right now I have a small 15GB drive C and a 3 partition
120GB which contains G (Primary), H and J. My DVD-ROM is
E, my DVD-RW is F. I don't know where D went. <G>

I would like to swap out the C drive. What I am wondering
is what will CXP Pro do with the drive letters? The new
drive will be partitioned in two.

Will I have a "C" drive when I'm finished? Some programs
still require installation on "C" even if it's not the
primary drive.

I was advised when I did the upgrade from 98se NOT to
change the automatically assigned letters. Does that
still hold true?

Thanks,

John

 

[Alex Nichol]

Right now I have a small 15GB drive C and a 3 partition
120GB which contains G (Primary), H and J. My DVD-ROM is
E, my DVD-RW is F. I don't know where D went. <G>

I would like to swap out the C drive. What I am wondering
is what will CXP Pro do with the drive letters? The new
drive will be partitioned in two.

Do it by temporarily connecting your new drive instead of your big one,
and 'imaging' the C: to it. What I use is BootIT NG, from
http://www.BootitNG.com ($35 shareware - 30 day full functional trial)

Download, to its own folder, extract from the zip, run the bootitng to
make a boot floppy.

With the new drive plugged in as slave/secondary, boot the floppy,
Cancel Install, entering maintenance, then click on Partition work.
Highlight your C:, click Copy, then on left select the new drive (HD1)
and click Paste.

You might then consider a resize up a bit. I would hold off creating
the second partition for the moment

Now click on 'View MBR' and in it highlight the entry for this new C
partition and click the 'Set Active' Click 'Write Standard MBR' and
Apply. Also make a check that this partition is in the same place in
the table as it was if you do a View MBR on the old one (It ought to be,
as it is the only one on either disk, but make sure) - if not use the Up
or down to correct it.

Close out, swap the disks to make the new one the one that boots,
removing the old small one and restoring the second 'service' one, and
reboot into XP. Make sure BIOS gets the disks correctly detected first

That should leave things looking exactly as at present. You can now go
to Control Panel - Admin Tools - Computer Management, select Disk
Management and look lower right for the graphic of the new drive.
T-click in 'Unallocated space' and Create Partition, continuing to
format. This will pick up an as-yet unused drive letter

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi John,

If you properly configure the new drive, it should come up as "D" and "I" as
those are the next available drive letters. You can change the drive letters
as you wish by using the disk manager snap-in (start/run diskmgmt.msc) after
installation. You cannot change the system drive letter (C), and I recommend
that you not change any drive letters on partitions that contain installed
programs. As to others, you can reassign at will.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers aka "Nutcase" MS-MVP - Win9x
Windows isn't rocket science! That's my other hobby!

Associate Expert - WinXP - Expert Zone

 

[W7TI]

using the disk manager snap-in

_________________________________________________________

May I ask what is a "snap-in"? I saw the term once before but have not
seen a definition.

Thanks,

 

[cimex]

Found on the Web:
"What is a snap-in?
Administrative tools to administer computers, services, other system
components, and networks."
"The Microsoft Management Console (MMC) is a tool used to create, save, and
open collections of administrative tools, called consoles. Consoles contain
items such as snap-ins, extension snap-ins, monitor controls, tasks,
wizards, and documentation required to manage many of the hardware,
software, and networking components of your Windows 2000 system. You can add
items to an existing MMC console, or you can create new consoles and
configure them to administer a specific system component."

That helps a lot!

See this article as well. To be honest, I learned more about snap-ins from
the contexts in which the term appears than from the info I was able to cull
from the Web!
www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/prodtechnol/winx
ppro/proddocs/sag_mmcconcepts1_2.asp

 

[Bee]

Found on the Web:
"What is a snap-in?
Administrative tools to administer computers, services, other system
components, and networks."
"The Microsoft Management Console (MMC) is a tool used to create, save, and
open collections of administrative tools, called consoles. Consoles contain
items such as snap-ins, extension snap-ins, monitor controls, tasks,
wizards, and documentation required to manage many of the hardware,
software, and networking components of your Windows 2000 systemYou can
add items to an existing MMC console, or you can create new consoles and
configure them to administer a specific system component."
That helps a lot!
See this article as well. To be honest, I learned more about snap-ins from
the contexts in which the term appears than from the info I was able to cull
from the Web!
www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/prodtechnol/winx

The author of the first quote is an idiot, and that of the second a clown
talking to himself. Let us be honest, this industry is full of muddled
headed, self aggrandized numskulls.