Adding a new hard drive in Windows 2000, questions.

[Cat]

My home system, due to a bizarre system of laziness, drive swapping, and Windows XP reinstalls, now has three physical drives. They're D:, K:, and Z:. I really can't do much about renaming them, since one is the boot drive, and one is the system.

At work, I'm adding a new drive, and I'd like to ensure that will be C: once all is said and done. However, for a short period of time, I also want to use the drive to back up some data.

So, how do I add the drive in Win2K, partition and format, and then switch my current and added drives, so that the new drive is seen as C:. I know that drive letters don't mean much anymore, but some stupid programs often assume that a C:\ drive exists, and I have to subst Z->C for them to work.

I know the steps involved for doing all of the above, but I don't want to end up in the mess I am at home, with unchangable drive letters.

 

[SpeedFreak03]

Normally, when you add a drive (or partition), it will come as the next available letter. So, if you have hard drives C and D, and cdroms E and F, then your new drive would be G. If you want to change the drive letters, go to Control Panel, then Administrative Tools. Then open up Computer Management, and on the left, click Disk Management. Then, up at the top, your drives are listed, and at the bottom, everything is listed. If you right click on anything, go to Change Drive Letter and Paths. This will allow you can change it's letter, whether its a harddrive or cd-rom drive. That should work! BTW, you can try this at home to.

 

[Cat]

Sorry if I wasn't more specific. I'm pretty savvy when it comes to this. I know how to change drive letters, and whatnot. The problem is, I cannot change D: and K: at home. Windows won't let me, and it's a known limitation, since they are system / boot drives. There is a way to attempt to fix it, but it's not very safe, and involves some DOS fun.

I want to know how to avoid the situation I got myself into in the first place.

 

[Panther505]

Originally posted by: Cat
Sorry if I wasn't more specific. I'm pretty savvy when it comes to this. I know how to change drive letters, and whatnot. The problem is, I cannot change D: and K: at home. Windows won't let me, and it's a known limitation, since they are system / boot drives. There is a way to attempt to fix it, but it's not very safe, and involves some DOS fun.

I want to know how to avoid the situation I got myself into in the first place.

When you install unhook all other drives and install to that drive only. If you need to backup something to the drive then pre-partition it and format both partitions. Copy what you need to to the second partition and then when you boot to the CD the 1st partition will be C: and the second partition will be D: If you format C during the install everything will be fine.

 

[SpeedFreak03]

Originally posted by: Cat
Sorry if I wasn't more specific. I'm pretty savvy when it comes to this. I know how to change drive letters, and whatnot. The problem is, I cannot change D: and K: at home. Windows won't let me, and it's a known limitation, since they are system / boot drives. There is a way to attempt to fix it, but it's not very safe, and involves some DOS fun.

I want to know how to avoid the situation I got myself into in the first place.

Ooooooh. Sorry for treating you like a n00b lol. What Panther said should work fine for you though. Good luck!