Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware (
More info?)
Hi, Paul.
Is there something useful in that partition? If not, just remove it. Then
create one or more new partitions, assign letters, and format it (them).
WinXP assigns letters by default, based on its own algorithm. These
letters, though, are not permanent. Each time you reboot, the letters are
re-assigned from scratch, which can get awfully confusing if you reorganize
your hardware. If you assign your own choice of letters with Disk
Management (Drive R: for Removable?), it will try to assign that same letter
at each reboot.
To extract data from that drive, you may need to look in Disk Management's
Help file for "foreign disks" and see how to get WinXP to recognize it. To
WinXP, there's little difference between a completely new HD and one that
was previously removed and returned to the same computer.
I have a small USB "thumb drive", but have no other experience with USB
external drives. Maybe you need to update your USB drivers? But I'm just
guessing now.
RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
rc@corridor.net
Microsoft Windows MVP
<anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:2294701c45e07$cfe219e0$a601280a@phx.gbl...
> Thanks (in advance) for your help. I did use Disk
> Management, and it recognizes the
> drive/partition/volume. It has a status
> of "healthy/active." It just won't give me a letter!
> When I right-click on that particular volume, all the
> options except "remove partition" are grayed out.
>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>Hi, Paul.
>>
>>In spite of the universally-used phrase, "drive letters"
> are never assigned
>>to hard drives, but only to partitions on the drive.
> And that's not
>>accurate, either, because letters are not assigned
> to "extended partitions",
>>but to "logical drives" within the extended partition.
> So, they should be
>>called "volume letters", but it's too late for that,
> so...
>>
>>Have you found Disk Management yet? It's been in Win2K
> since the year 2000
>>and in WinXP since 2001, but many users haven't found it
> yet. At the Run
>>prompt, type: diskmgmt.msc
>>
>>Then see what Disk Management tells you about that HD.
> You should be able
>>to use Disk Management to delete existing partitions and
> then create new
>>ones, assign drive letters, and format them.
>>
>>When you tell us what Disk Management tells you, we'll
> be better able to
>>help.
>>
>>RC
>>
>>"Paul S" <pjschman@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>>news:22c4b01c45def$abdde730$a301280a@phx.gbl...
>>>I recently had a problem with a hard drive, and can no
>>> longer boot from it. It was a replacement drive, so I
>>> put the previous drive back in and now have no problems
>>> booting Win XP Pro. I put the newer drive in an
> external
>>> USB enclosure, as I would like to extract some data
> from
>>> it before reformatting it. I plugged it in, and
> Windows
>>> recognized the drive but will not assign a letter to
> it.
>>> I also tried setting up the problem drive as a slave,
> but
>>> I'm having the same problem - no drive letter assigned.
>>>
>>> Any suggestions? Please post or email responses and/or
>>> suggestions. Thanks.
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