Changing partition drive letters

[GrindR]

This has probarly been asked before or the solution is in another forum but I did a search so yea...

Ok so Im running Win98/SE and have a primary master 60 gig IMB h/d partitoned into a 4 gig c: and 52 d: or whatever, It dosn't matter I don't think. Well my brother recently added his own hardrive into my computer (as secondary master) to use for his storage location when he downloads his crap.

Annoyingly my d: has become an e: and my bro's h/d takes up my former d:.

I have tried using device manager to change the drive letter setting, but it only allows the letter to be changed on the cd rom. My bro used the registry to try and make his hardrive become e: instead of d: but to no avail.

How can I change the drive letters of my hard drives and partitions? I relise it would require a restart of the computer as changing a drive letter while the OS is running would not go down well...

As always, all assistance is much obliged.

Technology comes in 3 sizes - small, medium and RETRO!

 

[camieabz]

The device manager way should work.

Are you doing it correctly? Sorry, but I have to guess at the obvious first.

Make sure start and end drive letters are the drive you want.

<b><font color=blue>~ What do you mean "It isn't working!"...Now where's my sonic screwdriver? ~ </font color=blue></b>

 

[Toejam31]

<A HREF="http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article02-024" target="_new">Designate Your Own Drive Letters</A>

Or you can use a program like <A HREF="http://www.powerquest.com/partitionmagic/" target="_new">Partition Magic</A>, which comes with the <A HREF="http://topcc.org/softwarereview/reviews/partitionmagic7.htm" target="_new">DriveMapper</A> utility.

Toejam31

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[GrindR]

Device manager doesn't let me select the reserved drive letters drop down menu. It's greyed out. Might be an option somewhere to allow access to it. Btw DMA isn't enabled on my devices including hardrive and CD ROM but that's another problem for another thread, I don't think DMA would effect this problem though.

Well I do have a partition majic cd somewhere, so I might have to use it, quite a nifty little prog. Much better than the limited OS partition options.

Technology comes in 3 sizes - small, medium and RETRO!

 

[xyz]

To understand this issue, you have to understand how drive letters are assigned?
Computer assigns the drive letters to the partitions in the following order;

1.Primary partition (active)on the first physical HDD, in your case it's C:
2.Any other primary partition(s) if present, (you don't have any second primary partition.)
3.Any primary partition on the second hard drive, in your case D:
4.All logical drives in the extended partition, on the first HDD in your case E:
5.All logical drives in the extended partitioin, on the second HDD, in your case, none.

so you understand why the drive letter changed from D: to E: because the new hard drive you added had a primary partition so it occupied the letter D: and you logical drive on the first hard drive shifted to E:

<b>How to change the drive letters?</b>

The good news here is that a hard drive does not have to have a primary partition in use. If you create the partition(s) on your new hard drive as extended logical (not primary) partitions, then they will fall after all your currently existing drive letters.

Backup all the data from the new Hard drive to your old one and repartition the new HDD to use only the Extended partition not the primary.

<A HREF="http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;q282530&" target="_new">How to Prevent Drive Letters from Changing After You Add a Hard Disk or a CD-ROM</A>

<A HREF="http://www.sundialsystems.com/articles/drive.html" target="_new">Adding another Hard Drive</A>

<font color=blue>Mubashar</font color=blue>
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