Server 2003 Drive letter issue

[Paperlantern]

I did a bunch of searches, both here and on google to try and solve this issue, however i'm not sure i can word it right, all my results just tell me to go to computer management, then disk management, I know how to do that. My problem is this:

I upgraded the disk in my server from a 160GB drive to a 500GB drive. After 4 years the 160 finally got close to full, so it was time. I performed the data migration yesterday, it took all night for roughly 135GB (unfortunately i could only put both drives on the same IDE Channel, making it excruciatingly slow). That aside, the copy was successful, I removed the old drive (which was D) and installed the new drive (which was, during the copy, E). Now, with the old drive gone, the new drive is STILL E, and D is not an available letter in disk management, and I am not sure how to free it up, because it breaks the website and many other services on the computer (FTP and file shares as well) and would be much easier to not change anything else and just get the data drive back to D, instead of E.

Help!

 

[Paperlantern]

Ah never mind, i'm an idiot and didn't even NOTICE that the CDROM had usurped the Data Drive's letter during one of the reboots while it wasn't connected, problem solved. Sometimes it just takes typing it out to let the problem sink in and allow other possibilities to surface. Heh.

Though I am having an issue getting a WD MyBook to install to use for backups, which is odd... It just shows in device manager under "Other Devices" as a MyBook with a yellow dot and a black exclamation point... *sigh* it never ends.

*EDIT* I should add that this is an older system, its an AMD Thunderbird 850MHz with 768MB of RAM. Of course the built in USB 1.1 thats on board is excruciatingly slow for data transfers, so I installed a USB 2.0 PCI card some time ago. I had a 200GB external drive hooked up to it for several months working just fine, backups were fine, etc. The 200GB drive died and hasnt been hooked up since, that was about 8 months ago. now that Ive gotten a new backup drive, it wont work...

It doesnt even work when hooked to the USB 1.1 hub thats on board, it just yells at you saying its a HI SPEED device hooked to a non HI SPEED hub, then proceeds to tell me i have 6 ports available on the USB 2.0 hub, but of course then wont install the drive. On either hub. So, thats where im at now.

 

[postmortemIA]

disk management utility (diskmgmt.msc) can change drive letters on everything beside boot drive.

 

[Paperlantern]

disk management utility (diskmgmt.msc) can change drive letters on everything beside boot drive.

Uhm... wow... that wasn't at all helpful. I stated I was fully aware of how to use disk management. CD ROM however wasnt listed in the upper portion where i was working so i didnt immediately see it, hence the second post saying it was solved, my issue now is with USB drivers. Thanks though. *facepalm*

Anyway... An update on that, I completely removed all USB hubs by uninstalling them from the device manager, hoping to get them to reinstall, there must be an issue with the card somehow I think because now the entire card is "unrecognized" and even the CD that came with it (that i didnt need to install it when i first put it in) wouldnt work. So now i have an entire list of USB "Other Devices", it's fabulous. I have put this on the back burner for now, the server still functions as it should without USB so its not an emergency, and i'm just getting frustrated, perhaps I will have better luck at a later time with a fresh perspective, or with suggestions here.

 

[postmortemIA]

sorry, i skimmed parts about disk management.

usb hubs should get recognized again, full reboot + attaching them after windows has booted shall do the trick

 

[Paperlantern]

Unfortunately it's not that easy, the system is old, its native hub is 1.1, this is an expansion card. You cant attach a PCI card to a computer while the computer is running, thats kinda frowned upon. I'm still not sure what the issue is.

 

[RebateMonger]

I don't see any of these being your solution, especially since Server 2003 supports USB 2.0 natively, but some reasons for your symptoms that I've seen:

1) Origiinal drive letter assigned to USB disk is now being held by a mapped network share or a local drive
2) Antivirus is blocking USB drive support
3) OS was re-installed and not patched to support USB storage devices (again, not likely with Server 2003)

 

[Paperlantern]

1) This is possible, but not likely, all drive letters are as they have always been. Usually, when this happens, the drive still shows in drive management just without a letter associated, in this case, its not even successfully installing the device.

2) No AV installed

3) OS has never been RE-installed, this is still the original install from day 1, and near the beginning of the install, the expansion USB card was in fact detected natively and worked great. No software needed.

 

[Paperlantern]

Update:

This has escalated quite a bit, i reapplied some updates and removed and installed the expansion card, still no luck. Finally I decided to upgrade the whole box to a Athlon XP 2800+ I had laying around with 1.25GB of DDR400 RAM as well. That is head and shoulders more machine then it used to be. Of course the existing install crapped and puked when i tried to boot it so I am currently acquiring a new license for Server 2003 and will install a brand new server. I think i will put the old guts into an older case and run them in tandem for a while (hence why i need another separate license).