Rearranging Drive letters

[Chris Devol]

I have an internal HD, two internal DVD drives, a 4-slot card reader, and an
external USB HD.

XP arranges the drive letters thus:

C: Internal HD
D: E: Internal DVD drives
F: G: H: I: Card slots
J: External USB HD

How can I assign the external USB drive to D: and move the other drives up?

 

[Marcin Domaslawski]

Hi,

Start -> Run -> diskmgmt.msc

Marcin Domaslawski

 

[Danny Kile]

I have an internal HD, two internal DVD drives, a 4-slot card reader, and an
external USB HD.

XP arranges the drive letters thus:

C: Internal HD
D: E: Internal DVD drives
F: G: H: I: Card slots
J: External USB HD

How can I assign the external USB drive to D: and move the other drives up?

Not sure what you mean by, move the other drives up, up your list would
mean moving c: to b: and d: to c:. drive letters A: and B: are reserved
for floppy drives even if you do not have them. You could move J: to K:
temporary, then move the following I:>J:, H:>I:, G:>H:, F:>G:, E:>F:,
D:>E:. This would then leave D: free and open you could then move the
temporary K:>D:.

How to change a drive letter:

To change an existing drive letter on a drive, on a partition, or on a
volume, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, click Run, and then enter "compmgmt.msc" without the
quotes, click OK.

2. In the Computer Management, click Disk Management in the left pane.

3. Right-click the drive, the partition, the logical drive, or the
volume that you want to assign a drive letter to, and then click Change
Drive Letter and Paths.

4. Click Change.

5. Click Assign the following drive letter if it is not already
selected, click the drive letter that you want to use, and then click OK.

6. Click Yes when you are prompted to confirm the drive letter change.

The drive letter of the drive, the partition, or the volume that you
specified is changed, and the new drive letter appears in the
appropriate drive, partition, or volume in the Disk Management tool.


--
Danny Kile
Please reply to the Newsgroup ONLY

"Dogs come when they're called, CATS take a message and get back to
you." Mary Bly

 

[Chris Devol]

Hi,

Start -> Run -> diskmgmt.msc

Marcin Domaslawski

So the only way is to move each letter up individually?

 

[Chris Devol]

Not sure what you mean by, move the other drives up, up your list would
mean moving c: to b: and d: to c:. drive letters A: and B: are reserved
for floppy drives even if you do not have them. You could move J: to K:
temporary, then move the following I:>J:, H:>I:, G:>H:, F:>G:, E:>F:,
D:>E:. This would then leave D: free and open you could then move the
temporary K:>D:.

How to change a drive letter:

To change an existing drive letter on a drive, on a partition, or on a
volume, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, click Run, and then enter "compmgmt.msc" without the
quotes, click OK.

2. In the Computer Management, click Disk Management in the left pane.

3. Right-click the drive, the partition, the logical drive, or the volume
that you want to assign a drive letter to, and then click Change Drive
Letter and Paths.

4. Click Change.

5. Click Assign the following drive letter if it is not already selected,
click the drive letter that you want to use, and then click OK.

6. Click Yes when you are prompted to confirm the drive letter change.

The drive letter of the drive, the partition, or the volume that you
specified is changed, and the new drive letter appears in the appropriate
drive, partition, or volume in the Disk Management tool.

Thanks. I was hoping that there was a way to avoid having to change each
drive letter one at a time. What can I say, i'm lazy

 

[Marcin Domaslawski]

Hi,

Unfortunately - yes - you have to do it for every single partition.

Marcin Domaslawski

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Thanks. I was hoping that there was a way to avoid having to change
each drive letter one at a time. What can I say, i'm lazy

May I ask you a different question? Do you keep this external drive
permanently attached to the computer? Why? What do you use it for?

If the external drive is used to contain backups, I urge you to seriously
rethink the wisdom of that. As far as I'm concerned, the whole point of
backing up to an external drive rather than an internal is that your backup
drive doesn't stay connected when you are not backing up. That protects you
from simultaneous loss of the original and backup to many of the most common
dangers: severe power glitches, nearby lightning strikes, user errors, virus
attacks, even theft of the computer.

 

[Canopus]

May I ask you a different question? Do you keep this external drive
permanently attached to the computer? Why? What do you use it for?

If the external drive is used to contain backups, I urge you to seriously
rethink the wisdom of that. As far as I'm concerned, the whole point of
backing up to an external drive rather than an internal is that your
backup drive doesn't stay connected when you are not backing up. That
protects you from simultaneous loss of the original and backup to many of
the most common dangers: severe power glitches, nearby lightning strikes,
user errors, virus attacks, even theft of the computer.

Not only that, but, I've found it best to have removable drives such as
the external HD coming after fixed and CD/DVD drives so that fixed and CD
drives don't change letter after the removable one has been removed.

 

[Chris Devol]

May I ask you a different question? Do you keep this external drive
permanently attached to the computer? Why? What do you use it for?

If the external drive is used to contain backups, I urge you to seriously
rethink the wisdom of that. As far as I'm concerned, the whole point of
backing up to an external drive rather than an internal is that your
backup drive doesn't stay connected when you are not backing up. That
protects you from simultaneous loss of the original and backup to many of
the most common dangers: severe power glitches, nearby lightning strikes,
user errors, virus attacks, even theft of the computer.

I use it as a backup and data drive. It's not possible to disconnect it for
any length of time, because I need frequent access to the data on it.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I use it as a backup and data drive. It's not possible to disconnect
it for any length of time, because I need frequent access to the data
on it.

Your choice, of course, but if I were in your shoes, and the data on the
computer were important to me, I would buy another external drive to be used
just for backup, and not rely on one permanently attached. The only weaker
form of backup there is to is a second partition on your only drive.

 

[Guest]

Hi,

Start -> Run -> diskmgmt.msc

Marcin Domaslawski

 

[Guest]

Hi,

Start -> Run -> diskmgmt.msc

Marcin Domaslawski