Hard drive replacement

[Guest]

I needed to replace my hard drive due to an imminent drive failure. I also
thought it would be a great idea to upgrade my OS from ME to XP. I received
a loaner hard drive from Western Digital, identified the new drive as master,
changed the old drive (with ME) to slave and loaded XP to the new drive. The
old drive was, of course, identified as deive C:. The new drive is
identified as Drive F:, as I have 2 optical drives on my desktop.
I have no rpoblem with keeping drive F: as my boot drive designation but it
is a bit confusing when you look on My Computer and do not see a drive C:.
I found the following article in the knowledge base. Is this the method I
shou,d use to re-identify my drive as C:? I have removed the old drive from
my system.

How To Restore the System/Boot Drive Letter in Windows
Article ID : 223188
Last Review : July 15, 2004
Revision : 1.0
This article was previously published under Q223188

Is there an easier, less risky way of re-identifying my drive?

 

[Ron]

I needed to replace my hard drive due to an imminent drive failure. I also
thought it would be a great idea to upgrade my OS from ME to XP. I received
a loaner hard drive from Western Digital, identified the new drive as master,
changed the old drive (with ME) to slave and loaded XP to the new drive. The
old drive was, of course, identified as deive C:. The new drive is
identified as Drive F:, as I have 2 optical drives on my desktop.
I have no rpoblem with keeping drive F: as my boot drive designation but it
is a bit confusing when you look on My Computer and do not see a drive C:.
I found the following article in the knowledge base. Is this the method I
shou,d use to re-identify my drive as C:? I have removed the old drive from
my system.

How To Restore the System/Boot Drive Letter in Windows
Article ID : 223188
Last Review : July 15, 2004
Revision : 1.0
This article was previously published under Q223188

Is there an easier, less risky way of re-identifying my drive?

That article is to be used IF an app has changed your drive letters.
Don't use this to change the boot drive once XP is loaded. XP used a
letter other than C: because XP saw a primary active partition when it
was loaded. So it designated that drive C: and loaded on the next
available primary part (which it probably created. If you use this kb
article, then you will not be able to boot up. You have to use a
partition proggy to change the other primary part (where ME is) to a
logical drive and reload XP. I had this same problem where I had an
XP install booting from E: for about a year. I installed Norton
(kid's PC, not mine) and it failed because the bootable partition was
not C:. Using this kb article made my system unbootable. I had to
change the other primary part to logical, or XP always made this the
E: drive before installing. HTH.

Ron

 

[Rock]

I needed to replace my hard drive due to an imminent drive failure. I also
thought it would be a great idea to upgrade my OS from ME to XP. I received
a loaner hard drive from Western Digital, identified the new drive as master,
changed the old drive (with ME) to slave and loaded XP to the new drive. The
old drive was, of course, identified as deive C:. The new drive is
identified as Drive F:, as I have 2 optical drives on my desktop.
I have no rpoblem with keeping drive F: as my boot drive designation but it
is a bit confusing when you look on My Computer and do not see a drive C:.
I found the following article in the knowledge base. Is this the method I
shou,d use to re-identify my drive as C:? I have removed the old drive from
my system.

How To Restore the System/Boot Drive Letter in Windows
Article ID : 223188
Last Review : July 15, 2004
Revision : 1.0
This article was previously published under Q223188

Is there an easier, less risky way of re-identifying my drive?

No. the way to do this is not have the old drive attached, and install
XP to the new drive. It will then enumerate as the C: drive. Then
attach the old drive as a slave drive. There is no way to change the
drive letter for the boot/system drive.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the feedback. I was expecting your responses but was hoping
there was an easy fix. Do you see any problem in my continuing to use my PC
as is, with the boot drive identified as drive F:.

The only other solution I see, without losing everything I have done in the
past month, is to buy another HD, temporarily remove the old drive and the
install a new drive, then reload the new drive with XP. After I have a new
drive with XP loaded on the new C:, then I can re-install the old drive as a
slave and use its information as data ( not applications) as they would be
registered in XP.

Again, thanks for your help and assistance.

Dan

 

[Ron]

Thanks for the feedback. I was expecting your responses but was hoping
there was an easy fix. Do you see any problem in my continuing to use my PC
as is, with the boot drive identified as drive F:.

The only other solution I see, without losing everything I have done in the
past month, is to buy another HD, temporarily remove the old drive and the
install a new drive, then reload the new drive with XP. After I have a new
drive with XP loaded on the new C:, then I can re-install the old drive as a
slave and use its information as data ( not applications) as they would be
registered in XP.

Again, thanks for your help and assistance.

Dan

My kids PC ran with the xp boot drive as E: for over a year. Never a
problem until I loaded Norton AV 2005. I've been waiting to load XP
Pro on it though, so that made it as good a time as any.

Ron

 

[D.Currie]

Most of my computers use something other than "C" as the XP drive, and I
haven't had any problems.

The exception might be some ancient or poorly-written software that doesn't
want to load anywhere but "C," but I haven't run into anything like that for
a long time. Some people, however, have a problem getting their heads
wrapped around the idea that they don't have a "c" drive.