Sata drive not seen as C drive under dos...

[AndyD2k]

Not sure what's going on as I never had the issue till I rebuilt the system for my bro using a older sata drive that I used have as my primary. Whatever I do, the IDE drive always show up as C:

Not a huge deal would like to get the Sata drive to show up as C: if it all possible. Tried doing fixmbr under windows repair but didn't help

 

[cprince]

I don't think it's possible. Doesn't DOS always put the IDE primary master as C: and everything else D, E, F, etc ...

 

[AndyD2k]

I didn't think so but I'm having a hard time remembering otherwise since i've been using Sata drives for a while. Things are working just fine anyway so I think I'll just accept it the way it is. Thanks

 

[NoelS]

Andy,

Do you have Partition Magic program? You can go into Advanced menu and change drive letters there... If the drive letter is already taken, you may have to do some manipulation...

Another solution: You can also right click on My Computer, select Manage, then select Disk Management. Right click on any drive and you can change drive letters. Hint, you may have to make room to move the SATA up to the C drive, so designate one of your DVDs or a higher lettered drive with a higher letter (like H or Z, etc) then you can move drive letters around to suit yourself. Like playing a game to get al the letters lined up and they won't fit unless you make room for them

Noel

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: NoelS
Andy,

Do you have Partition Magic program? You can go into Advanced menu and change drive letters there... If the drive letter is already taken, you may have to do some manipulation...

Another solution: You can also right click on My Computer, select Manage, then select Disk Management. Right click on any drive and you can change drive letters. Hint, you may have to make room to move the SATA up to the C drive, so designate one of your DVDs or a higher lettered drive with a higher letter (like H or Z, etc) then you can move drive letters around to suit yourself. Like playing a game to get al the letters lined up and they won't fit unless you make room for them

Noel

For the boot volume that won't work. For the boot/system volume there's really no good workaround.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: cprince
I don't think it's possible. Doesn't DOS always put the IDE primary master as C: and everything else D, E, F, etc ...

Windows NT and later related OSs have no DOS components - x64 Win won't even run DOS apps anymore.

Windows looks at the drives and as they're enumerated from the BIOS they are assigned drive letters. If that's an issue, disable the drives during the Windows install.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: AndyD2k
Not sure what's going on as I never had the issue till I rebuilt the system for my bro using a older sata drive that I used have as my primary. Whatever I do, the IDE drive always show up as C:

Not a huge deal would like to get the Sata drive to show up as C: if it all possible. Tried doing fixmbr under windows repair but didn't help

Remove the IDE drive during the install.

FIXMBR is for fixing master boot record issues and has nothing to do with drive letters.

 

[redbeard1]

A lot of things, Windows included, used to look for IDE drives first then scsi drives. I believe that IDE still gets presidence, then SATA. I'm not sure if there is a way to have the bios set the first drive preference, but the suggestion to remove the IDE drive during an install may be the simplest.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: redbeard1
I'm not sure if there is a way to have the bios set the first drive preference

My Gigabyte 965-based Intel box permits selecting any as first drive - typically one selects first the device boot order (USB FDD, USB CD, CD, HDD, etc.) and then within the device, one can select the precedence of items within the device class.