changing drive from D: to C:

  • Thread starter Thread starter sillyputty
  • Start date Start date
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sillyputty

I'm going to be buying a new HD soon, mostly to replace my aging WD
80g IDE. A while back, trouble-shooting my computer I switched the
other HD, a Maxtor 60g SATA, from one mobo connector to another and
ended up with my main HD with the OS (XP) as the D: drive and the
backup (WD) as C:. I'd like to switch them back. Is there a way to do
it with a new HD without reinstalling the OS? Thx.
 
sillyputty said:
I'm going to be buying a new HD soon, mostly to replace my aging WD
80g IDE. A while back, trouble-shooting my computer I switched the
other HD, a Maxtor 60g SATA, from one mobo connector to another and
ended up with my main HD with the OS (XP) as the D: drive and the
backup (WD) as C:. I'd like to switch them back. Is there a way to do
it with a new HD without reinstalling the OS? Thx.
Click to expand...

Hi Sillyputty,

In XP Pro (don't know if it's the same on other OS) go to Start > Control
Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management and click "Disk
Management" in the left directory list pane. You can now rightclick a drive
and select "Change Drive Letter and Paths...". You'll have to change the
current C: to an unused letter so that you can change the current D: to C:

Hope this helps

Andy
 
Andrew Bailey said:
Hi Sillyputty,

In XP Pro (don't know if it's the same on other OS) go to Start > Control
Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management and click "Disk
Management" in the left directory list pane. You can now rightclick a drive
and select "Change Drive Letter and Paths...". You'll have to change the
current C: to an unused letter so that you can change the current D: to C:

Hope this helps
Click to expand...

Since when does XP allow you to change the drive letter
of its active system partition?

A fresh format/reinstall is the best option.
 
Since when does XP allow you to change the drive letter
of its active system partition?

A fresh format/reinstall is the best option.
Click to expand...

If the person unhooks the second drive and boots from the original,
everything will be solved. The boot record did not move on that HD.
Formatting and reinstalling XP is not necessary.
 
I'm going to be buying a new HD soon, mostly to replace my aging WD
80g IDE. A while back, trouble-shooting my computer I switched the
other HD, a Maxtor 60g SATA, from one mobo connector to another and
ended up with my main HD with the OS (XP) as the D: drive and the
backup (WD) as C:. I'd like to switch them back. Is there a way to do
it with a new HD without reinstalling the OS? Thx.
Click to expand...
Not really as all registry entries and config file entries will
reference to the D: drive.
 
Conor said:
Not really as all registry entries and config file entries will
reference to the D: drive.
Click to expand...

When I first installed XP on an Asus P4P800-SE, the BIOS
was set to assign drive letters to all my card reader slots and
my boot drive was something like F or G. After a while, it
started to bug me, and somehow I managed to change it to
C, by changing references to the drive with the PC Mag. utility
COA32, editing boot.ini, and editing the registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices
(http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q223188)

....after first cloning the drive to another physical disk to be
safe. But I think I was very lucky. Anyway, it is possible, but
definitely not for the faint of heart.
 
Fishface said:
When I first installed XP on an Asus P4P800-SE, the BIOS
was set to assign drive letters to all my card reader slots and
my boot drive was something like F or G. After a while, it
started to bug me, and somehow I managed to change it to
C, by changing references to the drive with the PC Mag. utility
COA32, editing boot.ini, and...
Click to expand...


Why did you have to edit boot.ini? Boot.ini makes no reference
to drive names. You say that you made a clone. If you were to
boot that clone, you'd probably have to edit boot.ini to include
the clone's partition in the list of optional OSes. Perhaps you're
now really booting the clone and not the original OS?

*TimDaniels*
 
Timothy said:
Why did you have to edit boot.ini? Boot.ini makes no reference
to drive names.
Click to expand...

Do you know what? I may be thinking of another time when I had a
separate installation on a second partition and moved it to the first
partition...
 
Fishface said:
Do you know what? I may be thinking of another time when I had a
separate installation on a second partition and moved it to the first
partition...
Click to expand...


Yeah, in that case you would indeed have to have changed the
partition number in boot.ini from "partition(2)" to "partition(1)".

*TimDaniels*
 
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