How can I change HDs' names ?

[ylan]

I just finished installing WinXP Pro , dual booting with Win98 SE . Before WinXP Pro installation, I had drives C:\ and D:\ on one HD. After WinXP installation on a second HD, I thought I should have drives E:\,F:\ and G:\ on it.

Now, I have C:\ and E:\ on one HD and D:\,F:\ and G:\ on the other HD. As a result, all the shortcut in Win98 SE are invalid ! How can I change drive E:\ to D:\ and vice virsa ?
Thanks,

 

[linney]

What file system have you installed XP as. NTFS or FAT32?

HOW TO: Change Drive Letter Assignments in Windows XP (Q307844)

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q307/8/44.asp

Assign, change, or remove a driver letter........Help and Support program

thread779-274165

Thread779-197666

Do a search in this Forum for Drive Letter.

 

[wolluf]

You are going to have trouble changing drive letter assignment in win98 - apart from CD drives, it basically makes its own mind up - with 2 hard drives and multiple partitions, 1st partition on drive 1 is C:, 1st partition on drive 2 is D:, second and subsequent on drive 1 are E:, F; etc and second and subsequent on drive 2 continue from there - eg, G:, H: etc.

If you made all the partitions on drive 2 NTFS, win98 wouldn't be able to read them and would go back to C: & D: on drive 1 (but as I said, win98 wouldn't be able to read them...). You could do this AND install a freeware program from

http://www.sysinternals.com

(ntfs98ro) which allows 98 to read (but not write, that costs) NTFS partitions. Part of the config for this lets you assign the drive letters you want for ntfs partitions - so you could retain your C: & D:.
Hope this helps.

 

[alphaphi]

Sorry, but there is one detail that Wolluf seems to have left out: the order of the letters is 1. The order of the PRIMARY partitions; 2. all what remains. That means that if drive 2 only contains EXTENDED partitions, then drive 1 will have the letters C: and D:. I have here a "testPC" where the drive 1 contains one primary partition (obviously C, and one extended partition with three letters D:, E: and F:. WinMe resides on F (C is only data and boot). D and E are 16MB each: why? Because, if I must add a "foreign" drive for test purposes, it will mostly contain a primary partition, and all my letters will be shifted. I can easily suppress D or E (unused, not even formatted) to be able to load Windows on F...

A "foreign" drive is always mounted on drive 3, because there exists a drive 2 with only EXTENDED partitions (for WinXP, for paging, with work space for CD burning...)

A bit tricky, but it works...

 

[ylan]

Thanks : linney,wolluf and alphaphi for the comments. Please note that I formatted both HDs in FAT32. I just discovered that under WinXP , all drive letters were O.K. as expected. It's under Win98 SE that I got problem. Please advise how I can change the drive letter in Win98 SE . Just thinking about manually changing links make me sick ...

Thanks,

 

[alphaphi]

In Win98SE (and in DOS, Win95 and WinME as well), you CANNOT change the HD drive letters. This is simply NOT POSSIBLE.

In Winnt, Win2k and WinXP, you know how this works, after the links Linney gave you.

You can either:
1. As Wolluf said, if your drive 2 contains a primary partition (easy to see with FDISK or, better, Partition Magic from Powerquest), you can transform it into NTFS. That means that this partition (and the data it contains) will become INVISIBLE and UNREACHABLE from Win98. (precisely, in the example I told you, my XP is on a NTFS partition, which is NOT a primary one, but for "confidentiality" reasons).

2. As I said, you can use only EXTENDED partitions on your drive 2: the order of the letters will be again C and D on drive 1, E and F (or more...)on drive 2.

3. The product I signalled previously, Partition Magic from Powerquest, can transform primary partitions to extended. Please note, that if you have already used XP as D: and estableshed some links, the same problem as before will happen; that the NTFS as of WinXP can only be handled with the Version 7 of¨Partition Magic (previous versions do not recognize XP NTFS partitions); and that a good backup is not superfluous before making such changes...

4. Additionally, please note that, to avoid the "links disturbances" what makes you sick, on my machines, the CD-ROM is ALWAYS M:, the recorder R: and the DVD if any is V:

 

[wolluf]

alphaphi,

I'd forgotten about extended partitions because I don't use them any more(they've gone 'missing' on me too many times). I also thought that they had to be associated with a primary partition (this is where mine have gone missing - after something's happened to primary) - but you've obviously set up a disk with just an extended partition. Just interested - can you do this with normal windows partitioning tools or do you need something like PM? And is it stable?

 

[alphaphi]

Wolluf,

This disk was partitioned with FDISK...no Windows tool, but a good old DOS one. This must have be done in the early days of Win98 (or 95 OSR2...) because FAT32 is used everywhere (except my 16MB "dummy" or "letter holder" partitions).

The partitions were possibly transferred, using PQDI, when I went to two 8,4GB drives...(the BIOS of this machine cannot go any further!). There is also a 4GB SCSI drive. This machine, still sometimes (seldom) used for test purposes, is built with a MB from TYAN, S1564D, Tomcat IV Dual, and two PI 233MMX, 192Mb EDO.

Using WinME, one of the processors is left cold...

This machine was built in December 1997 and is as stable as Windows can be...It has been used too with all betas of WIN2K, then now with WP PRO. But I didn't upgrade it to SP1 yet.