USB drives in WinPE

[DPM]

If I plug in a USB drive and boot WinPE it sees the drive without problems.
However, if the HDD is not partitioned or formatted WinPE assigns letter C
to the USB drive. I'd like PE to skip C and use D (or anything else). Is
there a way to do this? I want to run a batch file from the USB to
partition and format the HDD as C.

Thanks for your help.

 

[steves]

you can just go ahead and use drive letter d: to partition and format
it, then copy your files to it, it will become the C: drive when you
remove the USB key to boot from the hard disk. Since you do not run
the FBA until it is drive c:, no problem!

Steve

 

[DPM]

Steve,

I use diskpart.exe to assign a drive letter, and I thought that was a "hard"
assignment. Are you saying it isn't?

Dean

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

DPM,

There is no such thing as hard assignement of volume letters.

If you assign volume letters in active WinPE volume letter assignement will remain in memory part of registry untill you reboot
your computer.
True assignement is written in registry of any active windows so you can reasing or assign letters from your TD, or by opening hives
of offline registry.
So if you partition and copy XPe files to D: and then remove USB disk during the next boot from HDD your first partition will become
C: by default.

Regards,
Slobodan

PS:
Some more infos:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/embedded/community/community/tips/xp/rtpartin/default.aspx

 

[DPM]

Slobodan,

Thanks. I'll try it.

Regards,
Dean

DPM,

There is no such thing as hard assignement of volume letters.

If you assign volume letters in active WinPE volume letter assignement

will remain in memory part of registry untill you reboot

your computer.
True assignement is written in registry of any active windows so you can

reasing or assign letters from your TD, or by opening hives

of offline registry.
So if you partition and copy XPe files to D: and then remove USB disk

during the next boot from HDD your first partition will become