Partitioned drive letter assignment... 1

[beredon]

I have 2 hard disk drives. My first one is 30GB, the second one is 13GB. Both drives have 3 partitions (so I have a total of 6 drives).

OK, now here is my problem: They aren't in the correct order. The 3 partitions on my first drive are assigned the drive letters C, E and F (instead of D and E). And my second drive is assigned the drive letters D, G and H.

Does anyone know why this has happened and/or how to fix it?

 

[vop]

That is the way it is.

The first partition on each physical drive gets a letter in alphabetical order starting with C:. Therefore, first drive must have C: on it and the second drive must have D: on it. A third drive would (subsequently) receive E:, etc.

The remaining partitions are then allocated lettters in alpha order (E and F on 1st drive and G and H on second drive). Adding each subsequent new drive would bump up all drive letters by one position (each time).

This makes it critical to load programs only on drives that maintain a fixed drive letter or face having to rely on and/or execute a utility like Partition Magic to correctly reassign drive letters in the registry (but, not necessarily for shortcuts).

 

[Mulga]

Looks like the first partition on the second drive must have been made active. If this is the case it will take the next letter after the primary boot partition. I don't believe you can alter this. However if the partition does not have an OS on it, that is you don't need to boot from it, then it does not need to be active. Not sure if you can remove the active property using fdisk without deleting and recreating the partition, if you have to do that you will lose all data on the partition.

 

[jmatt]

Here is my file , items 2 & 3 will probably be the most help .

Download Tweakui , complete with install instructions from ,

http://www.microsoft.com/ntworkstation/downloads/PowerToys/Networking/NTTweakUI.asp

Letter Assigner . ( Freeware )

http://www.v72735.f2s.com/LetAssig/Screenshots.html

How to Prevent Drive Letters from Changing After You Add a Hard Disk or a CD-ROM (Q282530)

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q282530

COA32 (Change of Address/32) is a 32-bit Windows version , which runs under Windows 95/8 and Windows NT 3.51 or higher, lets you change the drive or directory of a Windows program without having to reinstall the program.
It works by searching for all references to the old path and updating them to reflect the new path.

http://www.zdnet.com/downloads/stories/info/0,10615,77440,00.html

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Another way through the registry .
Start / Run , type in regedit , press OK or Enter , press F3 , tick
1st 3 boxes , type in LastDrive , press Enter . Make lastdrive=Z

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Try , Control Panel > System > Device Manager > Disk drives , double click on the 1st drive & click on Settings . Tick Removable , this now allows you to change your drive in Current drive letter assingnment .
Repeat for the other drives .

 

[beredon]

Thank you for the quick response guys.

I'll try out your suggestions now.

 

[beredon]

Thanks guys, my problem is solved!

Tek-Tips is a fantastic resource.

jmatt, Letter Assigner worked a charm, although I'm not 100% happy relying on 3rd party software to allocate my drive letters. Ah well, it'll do.

Thanks again!

 

[jmatt]

Thank you .