XP Drive Naming Convention

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mike
  • Start date Start date
M

Mike

I'm trying to figure out how XP assigns drive letters to
IDE devices.

For instance, if I install one primary master hard drive
with two partitions along with a CD as secondary slave,
the primary partition on drive 0 is named C:, the CD is
named D: and the extended partition on the primary master
is named E:.

If XP is installed to a FAT32 file system and the system
is booted to a FAT32 boot disk, the drive letter
assignments change.

I know XP assigns drive letters to unformatted partitions
in many instances, but I don't understand the rest - and
it's very different than previous versions.

Thanks!

If someone could answer OR point me to some helpful
reading, I would appreciate it.
 
Mike said:
I'm trying to figure out how XP assigns drive letters to
IDE devices.

For instance, if I install one primary master hard drive
with two partitions along with a CD as secondary slave,
the primary partition on drive 0 is named C:, the CD is
named D: and the extended partition on the primary master
is named E:.

If XP is installed to a FAT32 file system and the system
is booted to a FAT32 boot disk, the drive letter
assignments change.
Click to expand...

A DOS boot will re-enumerate the devices every time it boots. First (or
active) Primary HD partition on each drive; Logicals in any Extended on
each drive; any left over Primaries, then other devices.

XP remembers the letters. If you start out with a single partition and
a CD they will get C and D. Add another partition or device and it will
get the next available letter. So depending on how you add things hard
drive partitions and other devices may be mixed up.

Apart from the partition where the system is, you can change these
assignments, at Control Panel - Admin Tools - Computer Management,
select Disk Management and look lower right for the graphic of the
drive. R-click a partition or a CD ion and Change drive letter
 
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