Drive letters backwards, how can I change back?

[Hop]

On my P4, my raid 0 volume (2x320gb sata drives) had two partitions on it, and they were correctly lettered, meaning the first partition had "C" and the second had "D".

I deleted the first partition during an install of Windows XP Pro on my new C2D system, created a new one, formatted, and attempted to install Windows. It didn't take, because I didn't have the correct voltage and settings set in the bios for my Crucial Tracer ram.

When I fixed all that, I went to install again, but this time, the second partition magically became the first partition, or so it was displayed, and lettered "C". The new one I created is now lettered "D".

I went ahead with the install, and everything works just fine, but I read about drive lettering causing problems if windows isn't on "C". Not sure of the validity of that, but would like to get things back to where they were.

I went into the Disk Management snap-in of the MMC and sure enough, the partition I recreated is first, the one I left alone is second, but they are lettered "D" and "C".

Is there a safe way to change those, even at the level of what the Windows install sees them as correctly lettered? I don't mind reinstalling since I haven't gone too far with my new install yet.

Thanks for your time!

Hop

 

[thegorx]

I'll assume that both partitions are primary and the second one is now the active partition.
The active partition will be the one that boots, therefore it will be called C:

you could make a back up image of c: and copy it to the first partition then make it active, edit the boot.ini and fix the mbr and you wouldn't have to reinstall of course it is easier said than done. Especially if you don't know what is wrong if it doesn't work when you attempt it.

also you could just make the first partition active and reinstall to c: then copy the D: to C: or whatever.

 

[Jeff7181]

Just change the drive letter of C to something like X, then change D to C, then X to D.

 

[Billb2]

Originally posted by: Jeff7181
Just change the drive letter of C to something like X, then change D to C, then X to D.

If I recall correctly, Windows won't let you change the drive letter on an active, boot partition.
For one thing, all the registry entries would point to the wrong location. Some third party utilities, like Partition Magic, can do it. They redo the paths to everything. A backup is highly recommended.

The best advice is to live with it. And do it right the next time.

 

[Hop]

Originally posted by: Billb2

Originally posted by: Jeff7181
Just change the drive letter of C to something like X, then change D to C, then X to D.

If I recall correctly, Windows won't let you change the drive letter on an active, boot partition.

Correct.

I don't know how I could have done it right this time, as I didn't have a choice available really. I guess to do it right is to wipe clean the whole volume/drives but losing that other partition, although expected, was better to keep than delete before I could get some things off of it.

I'll have to research a bit further I guess. I'm curious as to why the letters changed in the first place. Even before windows was installed, the drive letters were showing wrong during the initial install process. It's probably something a bit deeper into the MBR or GUID Partition Table (??) which is deeper than I'm prepared to go.

Thanks for the advice. I'll just burn off what I want and zero fill the drives, recreate the raid volume, and move on. Would be nice to know if there is a simple fix that can be used BEFORE installing XP.

 

[Nothinman]

Just leave it, the letter assigned to the volumes are virtually irrelevant.

 

[Hop]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Just leave it, the letter assigned to the volumes are virtually irrelevant.

Ok, and I haven't had any issues thus far. Just worried about getting deep into my install and then realizing there might be a problem. It's been a very long time since this has happened to me.

This is a gaming rig though, and all my serious stuff is on my Linux rig and my laptop. So if I have to reinstall... oh well. =)

 

[thegorx]

wrong thread