P4P800 and SATA drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter JimL
  • Start date Start date
J

JimL

I just built a new machine with the P4P800 motherboard and a Hitachi SATA
drive. I'm running Windows XP Pro. When I installed XP, the drive
assignments were wacky. Drives C: through F: were assigned to a card reader
I installed (for CompactFlash, SM, SD and MS cards), while drives G: and H:
were assigned to my DVD reader and DVD burner. My SATA drive was assigned
drive I:. I would, of course, like my SATA hard drive to be drive C:. In
addition, I plan to move an IDE drive from my old machine to this machine
and would prefer it be drive D:.

Is there any way I can force these new drive assignments? Would removing the
card reader and installing it after the other devices help?

It appears that it is using the card reader first (which is hooked into the
motherboard USB port), then the IDE drives, then the SATA drives. I'd
basically like to reverse that order. Any help would be appreciated!

Jim
 
JimL said:
I just built a new machine with the P4P800 motherboard and a Hitachi SATA
drive. I'm running Windows XP Pro. When I installed XP, the drive
assignments were wacky. Drives C: through F: were assigned to a card reader
I installed (for CompactFlash, SM, SD and MS cards), while drives G: and H:
were assigned to my DVD reader and DVD burner. My SATA drive was assigned
drive I:. I would, of course, like my SATA hard drive to be drive C:. In
addition, I plan to move an IDE drive from my old machine to this machine
and would prefer it be drive D:.

Is there any way I can force these new drive assignments? Would removing the
card reader and installing it after the other devices help?

It appears that it is using the card reader first (which is hooked into the
motherboard USB port), then the IDE drives, then the SATA drives. I'd
basically like to reverse that order. Any help would be appreciated!

Jim
Click to expand...

Go to Control Panel Administrative Tools Computer Management Storage
Disk Management

You can right click on each drive and change its Drive letter assignments.

Billh
 
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My SATA drive was assigned drive I:. I would, of course, like my
SATA hard drive to be drive C:.
Click to expand...

I had a similar problem when building my new system. My 2 Raid arrays
had some peculiar drive letters and I wanted them to be drives C and
D. To make a long story short, you can always change the drive
assignments in "Control Panel|Administrative Tools|Computer
Management|Storage|Disk Management."

What you cannot do is change the drive letter of the OS drive, which
is a PITA. Essentially what I did was to unplug all the extra drive
devices and install windows with just my primary SATA Raid array and
the DVD drive connected. This way the RAID array was assigned drive C.
It won't assign the DVD drive as C if there is a HD. After the WinXP
install I connected the rest of the drives and used the procedure in
the paragraph above to fix the other drive letters to my liking.

- --
Kevin Coates
Dewitt, NY USA
________________________________________________________________
(see headers for my pgp key, remove kc to reply by mail)
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JimL,

You have described the long fix.
There is a short fix on the MS web site and it entails removing the USB
devices, moving other drives "out of the way" in terms of driver letter
assignments and doing a registry edit to force your system drive to C.

This does not always work and can result in an unbootable system - if you
are for example running any Windows xxx server products with Active
Directory running you have to be careful about having recovery console
configured correctly before following the procedure or you risk total system
loss.

So, 2 choices, reinstall, or locate the article on the MS site. You really
*must* have a system backup before you do either so reinstall is easiest on
a non server system.

- Tim
 
Go to Control Panel Administrative Tools Computer Management Storage
Disk Management

You can right click on each drive and change its Drive letter assignments.

Billh
Click to expand...
DO NOT DO THIS!!! This is bad advice. BEFORE you install the OS you
have to disconnect the USB devices so the OS does not assign them drive
letters. If you change the drive assignments after you install the OS
the machine will become unbootable because the registry expects you to
boot from I:. By changing the drive assignment to C: you will guarantee
to hose up your system. If your drive is unformatted or formatted with
a different OS and you elect to delete the partition during setup and
reformat the OS will assign it a letter after the USB devices. It is
stupid but that's the way XP works. Good luck.
 
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You have described the long fix.
Click to expand...

Yes, but it is also the safest fix. It is the solution I chose on my
newly built system. It seemed a more reasonable choice rather than
finding out something didn't work quite right down the road after
installing all my other software.

One thing that I forgot to include was I also left the floppy drive
attached so I could load the Raid drivers during the WinXP install.

- --
Kevin Coates
Dewitt, NY USA
________________________________________________________________
(see headers for my pgp key, remove kc to reply by mail)


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First, thanks to everyone for the ideas. In general, they were along the
lines of what I was going to try. A reminder of my problem: when I installed
Windows XP, it assigned drives C: through F: to my memory card reader
slots/drives, G: and H: to the DVD reader and burner, and I: to my SATA hard
drive. I'd like to have my hard drive be C:.

A couple notes:

* You cannot change the drive letter in Disk Management - it won't
let you change the drive letter of the boot drive.
* Plan B was to detach the memory card reader, ensure drive letter C:
was available, and then reinstall Windows. Tried this - XP still
detects
that there is a partition on drive I: (the SATA drive) and simply
installs
over the top of that. So, I am back to having my SATA boot drive
being drive I:.

This may be a dumb question, but is there a way I can simply reformat the
boot drive and start over? I haven't loaded anything on the new computer
except XP,
so I won't lose anything.

Thanks again everyone - I do appreciate the help!

Jim
 
Group: I solved the problem, so I thought I'd let everyone know what finally
worked. I attached my old IDE drive, which was detected by XP and assigned
as drive C:. Since it wasn't a bootable drive (no Windows on it), it did a
Windows XP install (again). I then had the option to select a partition to
install to, and also had the option to delete partitions. So, I deleted the
partition containing Windows from the SATA drive, and then exited setup. I
removed the old IDE drive and rebooted. Windows Setup now started from
scratch and I repartitioned the SATA drive and installed Windows. It is now
drive C: just like Bill Gates intended. :-) I then installed the old IDE
(as drive D:) and the card readers and everything is just what I wanted.

My thanks to the group for their helpful suggestions.

Jim
 
DO NOT DO THIS!!! This is bad advice. BEFORE you install the OS you
have to disconnect the USB devices so the OS does not assign them drive
letters. If you change the drive assignments after you install the OS
the machine will become unbootable because the registry expects you to
boot from I:. By changing the drive assignment to C: you will guarantee
to hose up your system. If your drive is unformatted or formatted with
a different OS and you elect to delete the partition during setup and
reformat the OS will assign it a letter after the USB devices. It is
stupid but that's the way XP works. Good luck.
Click to expand...

It's OK, WinXP will not allow you to change th drive letter of the
boot drive. I know, I've tried it.

He will need to remove all drives except the boot drive and reinstall.
 
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