Forcing the computer to recognize the hard drive as the letter you want?

[rhk0327]

Forcing the computer to recognize the hard drive as the letter you want?

I have four hard drives. Two are on and direct IDE-motherboard cable and two are on an PCI slot IDE-adaptor. I was doing some hard drive swapping and when I put my original four hard drives back my musical play lists for windows media player weren?t working. A drive that was previously known as e: drive converted to another letter (I think it?s f: drive now). Since the old play lists now point to a non existent e: drive, they don?t work. How to I force the drive to be recognized as an e: drive instead of f: drive?


Specs
AMD Athlon 64 2800+ (1.8ghz default)
512 DDR MB 2700 Kingston value ram
512 DDR MB 2700 Generic ram
MSI k8t Neo Motherboard
antec sonata Case, 380 tru power
250GB HD
160 GB HD
120 GB HD
40 GB HD
Nec 2500 dvd-r drive ? packaged as mad-dog
BFG 6800 GT graphics card (default speeds)
windows xp

 

[TSCrv]

start> controlpanel > administrative tools > computer management

you should see something like disk manager or something.... click that then right click on a drive then right click > change drive letter

(from memory, do it pretty often.. lol)

 

[alcoholbob]

I tried it...

"Windows cannot modify the drive letter of your system volume or boot volume"

I've got
-SATA boot drive (73gb raptor) set to drive F:
-IDE data drive (160gb maxtor) set to drive C:

:\

 

[Insidious]

XP will not allow you to change the letter of the drive your OS is located on or the drive you boot to. Should be able to change the others though.

 

[ShadowBlade]

Originally posted by: Insidious
XP will not allow you to change the letter of the drive your OS is located on or the drive you boot to. Should be able to change the others though.

run > cmd
diskpart
list volume
[find the volume you want to change]
select volume 0 [change 0 to the volume you want]
assign letter X
exit
exit

this requires XP pro, home does not have diskpart

 

[rhk0327]

Thanks, I used the following suggestion successfully.

start> controlpanel > administrative tools > computer management

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: Kobe67
I tried it...

"Windows cannot modify the drive letter of your system volume or boot volume"

I've got
-SATA boot drive (73gb raptor) set to drive F:
-IDE data drive (160gb maxtor) set to drive C:

:\

I ended up in a similar situation when I installed Windows on my SATA hard disk with an IDE Zip drive connected at the same time. The Zip became C:, the CD and DVD ROMs fell in line after that, and the Raptor (boot drive) became F:. This doesn't cause any problems except with certain brain dead installation programs that insist on installing on C: if such a letter exists (the temporary solution was to assign the Zip drive to another letter, so there was no C: drive at all). The final solution was to install Windows with only the SATA hard disk and CD-ROM drive connected. After the install, connect your other drives and use the Disk Management to assign them to taste.