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Q: Hard Drive Letter Designation ( Answered 5 out of 5 stars,   0 Comments )
Question  
Subject: Hard Drive Letter Designation
Category: Computers
Asked by: traber-ga
List Price: $2.00
Posted: 26 Jan 2004 13:56 PST
Expires: 25 Feb 2004 13:56 PST
Question ID: 300451
Does is matter what letter is assigned to my hard drive? I recently
built a computer containing an internal USB card reader. It assigned
one of the card reader drives as "C:" but I'd like to have my hard drive be "C:"
instead of the current "I:" Does it really matter that the hard drive
is not labeled "C:" even though most programs initially attempt to save on the
"C" drive? The system seems to be working fine as is, but I wanted to
make sure it won't cause problems later down the road. I'd rather not
have to reinstall WinXP at this point.
Answer  
Subject: Re: Hard Drive Letter Designation
Answered By: sublime1-ga on 26 Jan 2004 15:27 PST
Rated:5 out of 5 stars
 
traber...

Speaking from experience, I can tell you that it may cause
problems when you *want* to reinstall, or repair Windows.

I'm using Windows 2000, which is essentially the same platform
as Windows XP, and I've been using a drive designated 'D' for
a couple of years.

Other than the tendency of many programs to default to installing
on the C drive, as you noted, I haven't had any serious problems,
*until* I had to repair the installation after a recent problem.

I used the repair option from the Windows Install CD to try to
fix a problem I was having with Windows Defrag not running (It
turned out to be completely unrelated to Windows, by the way).

After the repair, it booted up okay, but the drive had been
*reassigned* to the letter C - which meant that all my shortcuts
(518) were wrong! Well, Windows 2000 & XP both have a Disk
Management module under Administrative Tools -> Computer
Management, which has some of the same functions as Partition
Magic, in that you can reassign drive letters, and so forth.

So I went to that module and tried to reassign the main drive
(now C) to D, so that my shortcuts would be correct. Windows
wouldn't let me do so, giving me the message that it was not
permissible to reassign the drive letter for the main boot 
drive.

Happily, I have a copy of Partition Magic, which allowed
me to do so without any problem.

Fortunately, Windows 2000/XP is an extremely stable system, so
the chance that you'll need to perform a repair re-installation
is slim (keep in mind that the reason I did so turned out to
have nothing to do with a faulty Windows installation, but was
related to 3rd-party software).

Nonetheless, should you ever have to do a repair re-installation,
you will be facing the same situation, and would benefit greatly
by having a copy of Partition Magic handy.

Now, Windows *may* permit you to reassign your hard drive from
'I' to 'C', since it seems to favor this designation. You can
use the Disk Management Console to attempt this, if you wish.

You would first need to reassign the card reader from C to J,
or some other open designation. Then reassign I to C, and 
finally reassign J to I. Partition Magic has the ability to
schedule these sequentially, and then accomplish them all on
the next reboot. I'm not sure if the Windows Disk Management 
Console will allow you to do all three in one session, or if 
you'll need to do them one at a time, and reboot after each
reassignment.

Or you may get the message that you can't reassign the 
designation of the main boot drive, in which case you 
can use your system as it is and not worry about it 
unless you have to do a repair re-installation.

If you do reassign the hard drive to 'C', check all your
shortcuts afterward. Partition Magic has a function where
it will ask you if you want it to reassign the location
of all your shortcuts on the re-designated drive. I'm 
not sure that the Windows Disk Management Console offers
this feature, so you might have to go in and edit all the
shortcuts from I:\Program to C:\Program.

Here's a good overview of the Disk Management Console for
Windows XP, on the ever-useful ElderGeek website:
http://www.theeldergeek.com/disk_management.htm

Additional information can be gleaned from an exploration of
the links resulting from the Google search, outlined below.

I think that covers everything, but feel free to ask if
anything is unclear.


Please do not rate this answer until you are satisfied that  
the answer cannot be improved upon by way of a dialog  
established through the "Request for Clarification" process. 
 
A user's guide on this topic is on skermit-ga's site, here: 
http://www.christopherwu.net/google_answers/answer_guide.html#how_clarify 
 
sublime1-ga


Searches done, via Google:

assign "Disk Management Console
://www.google.com/search?q=assign+%22Disk+Management+Console
traber-ga rated this answer:5 out of 5 stars and gave an additional tip of: $3.00
Answer was very thorough - thanks.

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