Drive letter question

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ken_B
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Ken_B

In Explore, my XP installation has been showing the primary master hard
drive as C: and the slave as F:, the secondary master (DVD-RAM) as D: and
the secondary slave (DVD-RW) as E:

Firstly, I don't understand why is shows the primary slave as F: instead of
D: as all other OS's I've used.

Today I decided I wanted to reverse the other two drives, which I did,
making the DVD-RW secondary master and the DVD-RAM slave. (I did remember to
correct the jumper settings, by the way.)

But in Explore, the two drives I swapped are still showing the same drive
letters they had before I changed them: secondary master as E: and slave as
D: - this seems wierd. What's going on here?

Note: I noticed Nero Burning ROM has them in the right order - DVD-RW as
secondary 0 drive and DVD-RAM as secondary 1 drive. Same on the bootup
screen.

I know how to re-assign drive letters in XP - should I just do that, or is
there some reason they are listed as they are in Explore?

Any suggestions muchly appreciated, and Happy Thanksgiving.
 
Ken_B said:
In Explore, my XP installation has been showing the primary master hard
drive as C: and the slave as F:, the secondary master (DVD-RAM) as D: and
the secondary slave (DVD-RW) as E:

Firstly, I don't understand why is shows the primary slave as F: instead of
D: as all other OS's I've used.

Today I decided I wanted to reverse the other two drives, which I did,
making the DVD-RW secondary master and the DVD-RAM slave. (I did remember to
correct the jumper settings, by the way.)

But in Explore, the two drives I swapped are still showing the same drive
letters they had before I changed them: secondary master as E: and slave as
D: - this seems wierd. What's going on here?

Note: I noticed Nero Burning ROM has them in the right order - DVD-RW as
secondary 0 drive and DVD-RAM as secondary 1 drive. Same on the bootup
screen.

I know how to re-assign drive letters in XP - should I just do that, or is
there some reason they are listed as they are in Explore?

Any suggestions muchly appreciated, and Happy Thanksgiving.
Click to expand...

Drive letter assignment is not OS-dependent as you suggest.
It depends on the order in which the various devices are
installed.

Your Explorer drive letters adjust themselves immediately after
you make a change in the disk manager. If they don't then I
recommend a reboot. How exactly did you actually change them?
next reboot. In most cases they
 
To make your drive letters "match" what you want simply change the drive
letters in Device manager. Windows XP really makes changing drive letters
easy. The only drive you are not able to change with this method is the
System drive (which for you is drive C:) The only real problem which could
occur is if you had created a permanent swap file on the F: drive, if so
simply delete it before changing letters.

For this to be easy, place some type of CD in each CD drive and media into
any type of media reader. This will make the drive letters show up in the
proper window for these instructions. Without the media in the drive or
device, they will not show up correctly.

Right click on My Computer then left click on Manage. Left click on Disk
Management and you will see all your drive information appear in the right
window.

To make your Primary Slave the D: drive you need to make "room" for it. To
do this, change the current drive letter to an unused letter. To do this,
right click on the Drive D under Volume and then left click on "Change drive
letter and paths". A window will open. Click on Change and another window
will open. To the right of where it says "Assign the following drive
letter", will be a drop down selection box. Left click on it. Take one of
the letters but make sure you don't use any mapped drive letters that were
set up to access a different computers files on a network. (I use Drive R
for a CD or DVD read only device and W for a CD or DVD writing device but
your choice.) Then click OK.

You will see the drive letter change. Now you can do the same for Drive F:
and change it to drive D:. You can rearrange drive letters to you heart's
content.
 
Drive letter assignment is not OS-dependent as you suggest.
It depends on the order in which the various devices are
installed.
Click to expand...

That is true for Windows XP and the other NT based versions of
Windows.

However for Windows 9x versions (95/98/Me) there are fixed rules for
drive letter assignment, with hard drive partitions always taking
absolute priority over CDROMs and other devices.

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
 
I set out to do that, and the CD drives were already showing the correct
drive letters...yet they are still reversed in Explore.
 
I changed those drive letters to way down the list, rebooted then changed
them back, and they now show up properly in Explore.

Thanks for all the advice.
 
Glad I could help


Ken_B said:
I changed those drive letters to way down the list, rebooted then changed
them back, and they now show up properly in Explore.

Thanks for all the advice.
Click to expand...
 
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