Shoutbox

I had been having problems with my C/E drive, a 40g that had been partitioned in half. My D holds all my music, movie, programs, etc so wasn't an issue but the C was sounding very bad, the whole airplane taking off bit so yesterday it got taken out and replaced with 2 separate 40g drives. What SHOULD be seen is C: *40g*, D: *120g*, E: *40g*

However, I have instead: D *the 120 so that's cool*, E *one of the 40's*, F is now my CD-RW and windows??? Well it's on G

Is there a way to fix the drive letter associations?? And any idea why they went this way? Would appreciate any and all help/suggestions from you multitalented people.

TIA!!!!

If you are using windows XP then this will work:
Go to Administrative Tools (normally in start>all programs>Administrative Tools)
And click "Computer Management"
Once that has loaded make sure the storage part of the tree-view is open, then click disk management.
You should then get this screen.

Right click on one of the drives where i've circled and a menu comes up with the option to "Change drive letter and paths"

Hope this helps

quote:

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Originally posted by Nitemistress
Is there a way to fix the drive letter associations?? And any idea why they went this way?

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Where does the 120GB comes from? Can you list exactly what you had before and what you want now (both physical and logical).

physical it would be something like:
Drive 0 (IDE0, master): 40GB
Drive 1 (IDE0, slave): 120GB
Drive 2 (IDE1, master): CDROM Drive
Drive 3 (IDE1, slave): DVD Drive

logical (what you use in Windows):
C: 20GB (Windows boot partition)
D: 20GB
E: 120GB
F: CDROM
G: DVD
etc...


To change drive associations do as madman66 said, but beware that you can't swith drive letters just like that without expecting some problems in some programs.

Thanks both of you. And Cookie, I had already anticipated possible problems due to changing and if necessary will reinstall as needed. And the 120g is my D drive, the one that has all my music,movies, programs etc. It's the size of the one drive, the other two are both 40g not partitioned, though I'm considering it with one.

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Well it seems that my C disguised as G wishes to remain that way. It won't let me change it so the only option I see in trying to get it back to normal, or at least a reasonable facsimile of normal, is to reinstall windows and somehow hope it corrects itself. Other than my CD-RW slipping in between my other drives the way it did the C/G is the only problem. Certain things refuse to install with it set like it is. Thanks for the suggestions though folks.

If you got a new HDD, then what are you booting off?

Hi. Keep in mind I'm not very knowledgeable with a lot of things with the computer, though learning more all the time but....

At first it was set to boot from CD which was a royal PITA because it kept wanting the windows CD in every time I would start up. Took a HUGE chance and went into the bios *was always told to stay out by my computer guy but he's not available very much anymore* and read the options and it's set to boot off *and am going strictly on memory so wording isn't exact* HDD1 <--or whatever it says to that effect.

However, the drives came up as listed: D,E,F & G after the two 40's were put in replacing the old 40 that was sounding so bad plus an old 12 I had in there. The drives SHOULD read, in order of size: C:40, D:120, E:40, F:CD-RW. It's the C that reads as G and it's this that refuses to change despite doing as suggested in the first reply. Because of this, some things just flat out refuse to install. At first I thought it might be because there was residue of windows on the one drive but it was reformatted to wipe it clean.

I dunno why it's doing this, is frustrating and I've been trying to read up on it but guess I'm not looking for the right thing to get the right 'fix'.

I can only repeat my previous question which you didn't answered yet:
Can you list exactly what you had before and what you want now (both physical and logical). This means I need to get 4 lists! a list "physical before", a list "logical before", a list "physical after" (how your HD's are hooked) and a list "logic after" (the driveletters in windows and their associates partitions)

(although the "logical after"-list has already been given in your posts: C:40, D:120, E:40, F:CD-RW)

And the bios setting can only be changed according to how your HD's are hooked up. Normally, your bootdrive is HD0 (IDE channel 0, master disk)...

Ok the best I can recall on the 'before' is this:

physical
Drive 0 Primary Master: 20GB <--1st partition of 40GB
Drive 1 Primary Slave: 120GB
Drive 2 Secondary Master: 20GB <--2nd partition of above 40GB
Drive 3 Secondary Slave: 12GB
Drive 4 CD-RW

logical
C: 20GB
D: 120GB
E: 20GB
F: 12GB
G: CD-RW

Currently

physical
Drive0 Primary Master: 40GB
Drive1 Primary Slave: 120GB
Drive2 CD-RW
Drive3 Secondary Master: 40GB

no partitions

logical
D: 120GB
E: 40GB
F: CD-RW
G: 40GB

don't know if this shot will help any but it's the best I can do



And when I checked through winxp manager all it said for boot up was 'normal'. This is all in an area usually dealt with by my computer guy so it's all things that I haven't had to really think about and consider. I'm not computer trained, most is self taught or what I've learned watching him or that he's told me about. Now he lives in a different city over 2 hours away and isn't able to get here very often so I'm trying to learn how to do more things myself. I appreciate the help very much but ask that you don't get overly technical in explaining otherwise I become one big question mark LOL Hopefully I've put things right so that you get the info you're after.

quote:

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Originally posted by Nitemistress
physical
Drive 0 Primary Master: 20GB <--1st partition of 40GB
Drive 1 Primary Slave: 120GB
Drive 2 Secondary Master: 20GB <--2nd partition of above 40GB
Drive 3 Secondary Slave: 12GB
Drive 4 CD-RW

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That is not physical, that is logical. And without added interface cards you can not have more then 4 IDE drives/CD's/DVD's...

Physical is how your physical drives are physical connected. You can't connect a drive partially; there is 1 plug per drive which you must connect to 1 cable.

Logical is how you assign your drive letters to different partitions of a physical drive.

Then simply ignore the second partition listed under physical since it's the first drive listed. I said I didn't know that much about this area. Sorry. The way the drives are listed, minus the 2nd partition is how they were and are now installed. I'm afraid I can't get any more specific than this simply because I don't know any more than what I'm trying to explain now. When I can afford to take a proper computer course I will but for now I learn through other people and looking up what I can online etc. The only computers they had in our school when I went stood upright along the back wall of the main science room and had reels. Frankly, I may not know a lot but for what I have learned, I'm pretty proud of me. Just wish I could say I knew more. Thanks again though for putting up with me as clueless as I am and for trying to help.