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Changing the C:\ Drive

L

LxMxFxD3

Senior member
Here is what I need to do: Move my F:\ partition to C:\ . Here is why:

I have a RAID5 array
3x300GB SATA - Partition 1: system (winxp pro) 25GB; partition 2: 525GB or so storage

After installing windows I'm not happy with the performance so I threw in my old PATA drive that runs xp great:

Disk 1
1x160GB PATA - partion 1: system (xp pro) 25GB - used norton ghost to drive copy it over.

My problem is - I can boot from the 160 PATA no problem after adjusting the order in bios, but it still shows up as F:\ not C:

How can I change this new system disk to C: ? Any ideas helpful, thanks.

Luc
 
I just put a raptor in my desktop, and put a fresh install of windows onto it. I didn't want to lose the install I had on a pata drive, because i had important files there. the raptor showed up as drive H:. The weird thing was that windows was booting from H:, but then pulling some of the files off of the pata C: drive. The computer actually booted very quickly (faster than the raptor does by itself), and when i get to it i'm going experiment with what was going on, and see if i can reproduce that.

Anyway...I had to disconnect the C: pata drive, and do another install of windows onto the raptor (gave a \hal.dll missing error). Then i reconnected the C: pata drive, which then showed up as E: in windows. I hten had weird boot problems until I reformated the pata drive which had been C:\. Everything is working great now.

You might try disconecting the raid array & boot the computer up. Then reboot with the raid array connected. You might have problems similar to mine, and might need to delete the windows files on the old c:\ partition.

If anybody has a better solution, because i would be interested in it too... Also..would disconecting the drives threaten his raid array's data in anyway?
 
You do not need to rename your system partition to C:
You only do this if you really want to.

Anyways, it is a simple swap routine.
1) start your PATA system on F: and change the C: drive letter, in Disk Management, to a temporary drive letter
2) start your RAID system, now on the temporary drive letter, and change your PATA system from F: to C: in Disk Management
3) start your PATA system, now on C:, and change your RAID system drive letter from that temporary drive letter to whatever you now want it to be.

Disk Management
right-click My Computer, select Manage, select Storage/Disk Management
 
The problem is that you had your raid array in there which was already C: when you installed windows on the pata drive. You will need to wipe out the PATA drive, then disconnect your raid array, then put windows on the PATA drive. You can't just change the drive letter, because all the pointers in the registry will look for F:
 
Originally posted by: birdpup
You do not need to rename your system partition to C:
You only do this if you really want to.

Anyways, it is a simple swap routine.
1) start your PATA system on F: and change the C: drive letter, in Disk Management, to a temporary drive letter
2) start your RAID system, now on the temporary drive letter, and change your PATA system from F: to C: in Disk Management
3) start your PATA system, now on C:, and change your RAID system drive letter from that temporary drive letter to whatever you now want it to be.

Disk Management
right-click My Computer, select Manage, select Storage/Disk Management
Click to expand...

This almost worked but not cigar. I tried countless variations of this last night before posting this..

What hapens is, I boot in the F:\ no problem. I then go to disk management and change the C: (RAID) drive to say L: I then reboot, this time using the RAID and when I get into windows, the L: drive is back to C:!!!

Doh 🙁 Any other suggestions?

 
This actually isn't what I did. I copied the C: drive to the F:\drive so all the registry settings should be the same, using norton ghost.

Hmm, now that I think about it I used a "make drive bootable" option. Perhaps this somehow makes it look for F instead of C or something?
 
alright I've done it!

This what I had to do:

1) Copy the C:\ 25GB partition from the RAID to a BLANK, unformated, 25GB partition on my 160GB PATA drive that was not assigned a drive letter. I used norton ghost with "OS" checkbox active.

2) Shut down the computer and physically remove the SATA cables to the RAID array.

3) Reboot the computer going into windows. This previously unassigned drive letter became the C: drive.

4) Reattach the SATA cables and reboot, going into bios. Setup the drive order so that it booted from the IDE first.

5) Rebooted and viola, I am speaking to you from my PATA drive which is now C:\ 🙂

6) Am now formatting the old space on the RAID!

Thanks guys for all your help.
 
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