D Drive suppose to be C drive but I cant change? help!

[ryder_22]

my C: drive is a ata133 drive. my d drive is a sata drive that has windows installed on it. i figured putting windows on sata drive was better bet. anyway, for some reason i can't get boot drive to be c drive. i dont want windows drive as the d drive.
i have win xp pro with asus MB. i went to bios and tried changing primary ide, set to ata currently, to secondary ide, but it wouldn't let me.
any suggestions would be great.

 

[Mobius]

AFAIK (and I have tried this before) you can't change the drive letter of the OS HDD. You blew it when you installed Windows. You should have left the IDE drive disconnected when you installed windows.

I think the only way to fix it is to reinstall it, with the IDE drive removed.

Any others care to comment?

 

[NewbieTechGodII]

AFAIK (and I have tried this before) you can't change the drive letter of the OS HDD. You blew it when you installed Windows. You should have left the IDE drive disconnected when you installed windows.

I think the only way to fix it is to reinstall it, with the IDE drive removed.

Any others care to comment?

Yes, actually...

You say your MB is an Asus. My wife's system uses the A8N-SLI Premium. If you look at your user's manual, you will discover that there are specific SATA ports (0,1 or 1,2), that are used for booting, while the others are for data. Check that out.


Word.

 

[hergieburbur]

I think you can change it either from Recovery Console or from within a DOS boot disk if you detach the C: Drive first.

Changing the SATA port will NOT help. You are already booting to the correct drive, you just are unhappy with it being D: correct?

 

[thelvyn]

Reinstall required thats for sure. Too many places where the drive letter is hardcoded when its installed to change it around.
Doesnt have to remove the ide drive just has to set the boot priority to the sata drive I would think.
Disconnecting it to be sure couldnt hurt though.

 

[NewbieTechGodII]

I think you can change it either from Recovery Console or from within a DOS boot disk if you detach the C: Drive first.

Changing the SATA port will NOT help. You are already booting to the correct drive, you just are unhappy with it being D: correct?

Wait, upon further review, this guy is screwed (the starter of this thread).

This guy has a complete lack of being able to make a coherent statement and has poor grammar. That being said, through an interpreter, this is what I think he is saying:

"me have compooter
me have won drive in compooter and me in stall windoes on it
compooter call drive c

now me put in sAta drive. comepewter say it is d Drive. me alsoo put on windoes on SaTa drive
compewter saay that the fist drive is c and the other is d. me want sATA too be c and the other d"

WTF?!?

So he has an PATA (IDE) drive in his system; that drive has Windows on it; it's assigned drive letter C.

Later on, our intrepid hero installs a SATA drive in his system; he installs Windows on this one too?

So now he has TWO drives, each with XP Pro, in his system?

Some people should just never be given access to computers. I am surprised that he isn't getting a boot-from message at start-up. I mean, he has two working copies of XP now.

Backup your data, reinstall Windows, and THIS TIME, during the installation process, delete all partitions that the setup utility finds on all drives, then install Windows on the correct drive.

If you had Ghost, you could have used its copy hard drive function to make a bootable copy of your PATA drive.

 

[hergieburbur]

I don't think he has Windows on his C drive any more, or he may have juct changed his boot.ini.

On the other hand, it doesn't even matter. My Windows drive is F:, and C: is an old install that went dead and I haven't retrieved the files from it yet. WHat is the difference which letter your drive is, as long as you know?

 

[choknuti]

I think it is more a case of the boot files being on C: (pata) and the windows folder being on D:

I would do a clean install as mobious suggested. Just make sure that the SATA drive is selected to boot first.

There are other solutions but this would be the easiest IMHO.

 

[ryder_22]

thats the best advice. thanks!
windows is on the SATA drive, not the other. this is a new computer and I've always had windows on C: drive. I prefer having windows on the drive letter that I'm use to.

This guy has a complete lack of being able to make a coherent statement and has poor grammar.

Actually I didn't have one spelling mistake and I tried to keep out unnecessary words. this isn't a academic paper after all. I'm a university student with strong standing, so I laugh when I read these things!
What isn't coherant is your mind, and all that it thinks.

Wait, upon further review, this guy is screwed (the starter of this thread).
Wow, your intellect shines so brightly, my eyes are burning.
Maybe its time you came out of Plato's cave and took a look into the real world!
Are you a high school student? Only a young, feeble mind would make such weak and pathetic stabs. I wonder what that must feel like, having a feeble mind? Maybe you could describe it to me?
On second thought, your porno's are probably done downloading-- better go have a look.

 

[choknuti]

Ouch!!!!! Man you hit low. Wouldn't want to be in NewbieTechGodII shoes right now. :twisted:

@ NewbieTechGodII

You should realize that not everybody has the same level of competence when it comes to doing things. So what if the OP is not so hot in his/her PC knowledge? I bet there are things that he/she can do that I wouldn’t dream of trying.

Also PCs are in the home appliance category today. It’s not just the computer geeks who use them anymore.

 

[hergieburbur]

If you have the space, and really want it on C, the best thing to do is this:

Move all your files that you want to keep over to the old IDE driveRemove the IDE drive from your computerReformat the Sata Drive and reinstall windows without the IDE driveReplace the IDE drive, and recopy your files over to the Sata drive

If you want some advice on how to do any of the above, let us know, and SOME of us would be happy to help you in a non-critical manner.

 

[NewbieTechGodII]

thats the best advice. thanks!
windows is on the SATA drive, not the other. this is a new computer and I've always had windows on C: drive. I prefer having windows on the drive letter that I'm use to.

This guy has a complete lack of being able to make a coherent statement and has poor grammar.

Actually I didn't have one spelling mistake and I tried to keep out unnecessary words. this isn't a academic paper after all. I'm a university student with strong standing, so I laugh when I read these things!
What isn't coherant is your mind, and all that it thinks.

Wait, upon further review, this guy is screwed (the starter of this thread).
Wow, your intellect shines so brightly, my eyes are burning.
Maybe its time you came out of Plato's cave and took a look into the real world!
Are you a high school student? Only a young, feeble mind would make such weak and pathetic stabs. I wonder what that must feel like, having a feeble mind? Maybe you could describe it to me?
On second thought, your porno's are probably done downloading-- better go have a look.

Perhaps you should look at the definition of grammar. I didn't say you misspelled anything, did I?

The rest of what you said is just indicative of your complete lack of a real life. I could go on, but you've already proven my point.

Oh but wait, I will go on. So you're a university student, eh? Strong standing, eh? I can't believe you misspelled coherent even after I had it written in a remark I made. Wow- I should have gone to your school. I guess it just goes to show that a school education does not (always) equal being smart. You're probably a democrap.

 

[Therlian]

AFAIK (and I have tried this before) you can't change the drive letter of the OS HDD.

Any others care to comment?

You can change your drive letter after installing Windows, even if it is changing your system/boot drive letter. The hardware recognition in the BIOS is fine as long as it recognizes all the drives, the issue is the order that Windows saw the devices when it was being installed.

To change your system/boot drive letter, do this: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223188/en-us

I have done it before and it worked fine for me.

 

[choknuti]

Nice catch!

That'll work to change the drive letter of the boot drive. From what I gather the op's boot and windows drives are two seperate ones.

Anyway it's worth a try (maybe I understood the op wrong) but the op should be careful and follow that part about system recovery to the letter.

Good luck

 

[cuppachar]

Jesus H Christ I'm slightly apprehensive now about getting involved in this one. I had (untile recently) 2 hard drives on my system, both with xp pro on. Both worked well and sat side by side using different systems for different applications (music production for one and general surfing and stuff for the other). Drive C the main drive went tits up (grinding and cliking noises till eventually no dice)
I'm now stuck with the other hard disc (D) which boots up great and gives me no problems EXCEPT when I try to install Battlefield or other apps. They install but won't run presumably cos they need drive c as opposed to drive d as a place to deposit system files. I did think of going to computer management and renaming the drive letter but recieved the warning that it may make your system bollocked. Any ideas?
I really don't want to have to do a clean install of xp.
Would it really mess things up if I used the snap in to change the drive letter from c to d?

 

[NewbieTechGodII]

Jesus H Christ I'm slightly apprehensive now about getting involved in this one. I had (untile recently) 2 hard drives on my system, both with xp pro on. Both worked well and sat side by side using different systems for different applications (music production for one and general surfing and stuff for the other). Drive C the main drive went tits up (grinding and cliking noises till eventually no dice)
I'm now stuck with the other hard disc (D) which boots up great and gives me no problems EXCEPT when I try to install Battlefield or other apps. They install but won't run presumably cos they need drive c as opposed to drive d as a place to deposit system files. I did think of going to computer management and renaming the drive letter but recieved the warning that it may make your system bollocked. Any ideas?
I really don't want to have to do a clean install of xp.
Would it really mess things up if I used the snap in to change the drive letter from c to d?

I have an external USB drive, several partitions, and an external memory card reader on my system. Whenever I reinstall Windows, it likes to redo all of my drive letters (like making the DVD drive J or something like that. So I use computer management (by right-clicking My Computer) to rename the drives. I also get that warning but I haven't experienced any problems (so far).

If it does go tits-up, you should be able to redo the name change. Of course, nothing beats reinstalling XP, its updates, and all of your apps for a whole afternoon!

 

[desolationw]

i have an asus m'board with a sata for boot and a backup ide. there is a choice in my bios(nothing to do with boot sequence) that lets me choose which drive is primary and secondary. currently my sata is set to primary(c and ide is secondary(d but if i swap them around( ide=primary and sata=secondary) the letters swap as well.

can't remember exactly what its referred to as but will check on my next reboot for you if your prob still aint sorted or you cant find what im on about

 

[ivoryjohn]

If you have the space, and really want it on C, the best thing to do is this:

Move all your files that you want to keep over to the old IDE driveRemove the IDE drive from your computerReformat the Sata Drive and reinstall windows without the IDE driveReplace the IDE drive, and recopy your files over to the Sata drive

If you want some advice on how to do any of the above, let us know, and SOME of us would be happy to help you in a non-critical manner.

This might not work. If the BIOS places the IDE drives before the SATA, or Windows sees them before SATA, then it might re-letter the drives creating chaos.

MS should have lost the drive letters long ago. Other OS's, Amiga for one, and I think MAC also, recognize drives by a volume ID that is formated on the drive so moving them around makes no difference to the OS.

Windows will probably insist on putting the BOOT.INI on the first primary drive it sees. Maybe if you reformat the IDE drive (with fdisk) so it is no longer a primary drive, then maybe Windows or the bios will skip it and name the first primary drive as C:

If you reformat the IDE drive as I suggest, it may not boot, because you have probably lost your boot.ini, so you would have to reinstall at that point.

If you are adventurous, you might be able to copy boot.ini (or is it disk.ini?) from the c drive to your SATA drive, and then you would have to write-enable it, edit it (it will have a place naming the drive where your OS boots). Even then, I think you will have to reinstall, because your registry has everything not on the C drive.

For what it's worth, my main computer boots off the D drive. This is becoming more common because larger than 137gig drives are such a pain to install on XP, that many install on C, patch xp, format d, expand d to full size, reinstall on d and format c, expand c, all because windows won't expand the boot drive.

 

[choknuti]

Sorry me bad. I misunderstood you. If your c: drive is not working and only the D: drive is then by all means try the fix. Just make sure that you backup your important stuff beforehand.

Funny that those games wont except D: to install their stuff .

p.s. grinding and clicking noises indicate that your HDD heads are going down south But the good news is that as long as the platters are not scraped your hdd could be fixable. (bewarned in most cases a low level format is executed)

 

[hergieburbur]

Doing it that way will work, I've done it a ton of times. The BIOS boot order does not affect drive lettering in Windows. Once it recognizews its OS drive as C:, it assigns the others descending letters from D:

I do agree that they need to ditch the drive letters though, that is just gettting old. ANOTHER thing they could hvae fixed in Vista but won't be.

 

[drk]

Copy boot.ini ntdetect.com and ntldr from C drive to D drive.(overwrite)
Remove C drive and boot off. Sata is now C drive.
Worked for me on an Asrock board.