Why is C the main drive?

[Red Squirrel]

I never really gave this much thought, but really, why is C the main drive in Windows, while A and B are reserved for floppy drives? Wouldn't it make more sense if the main drive was A, and they had treated floppies like cdrom drives where they just take the next available letter?

Random thought of the day.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Floppy boot drives?

 

[ISAslot]

The first drives were floppy drives

 

[SamQuint]

My old commodore 64 had no hard drive, only a floppy....

 

[tfinch2]

I never really gave this much thought

Obviously

 

[shortylickens]

A: 5 1/2"
B: 3 1/2"
C: Hard



Wait, wat?

 

[Crusty]

You've obviously never used a computer without a hard drive in it

 

[Lifted]

A: 5 1/2"
B: 3 1/2"
C: Hard

Damn, yours is bigger than mine. Mine's only 5 1/4".

 

[mmntech]

Just a remnant from the early days of DOS. Not sure why it's still like that.

 

[Merad]

Drive letters are an annoying relic. Wish MS would ditch them in Win8.

 

[Pardus]

Way way back when older pc's had two floppy drives, "A" and "B" were reserved for them, this became an industry standard and hasn't changed in over a decade. Have tried using "A" or "B" for a usb drive with poor results.

 

[DominionSeraph]

Floppies pre-date hard drives.

 

[TakeNoPrisoners]

It is C because there really isn't a good reason to change it.

 

[Bignate603]

It is C because there really isn't a good reason to change it.

Bingo. C was picked a while ago because it made sense, now it's the standard and changing it won't give any real benefit.

 

[MovingTarget]

A better question is why we are still using single letters for drive names...

 

[HamburgerBoy]

A better question is why we are still using single letters for drive names...

Why not? Makes typing a file path easier, and most people probably don't have 27+ drives and media devices.

 

[punjabiplaya]

because fat nerds wouldn't be able to wear this shirt then:

 

[shortylickens]

because fat nerds wouldn't be able to wear this shirt then:

Thats what we call the Dennis Miller Ratio.

 

[BladeVenom]

My old commodore 64 had no hard drive, only a floppy....

I had a tape drive before I had a floppy.

 

[Gillbot]

I had a tape drive before I had a floppy.

good old tape drives....

 

[FalseChristian]

I've got a question: Why is my MagicJack phone recognized as a CD-ROM?

 

[sjwaste]

I've got a question: Why is my MagicJack phone recognized as a CD-ROM?

Likely because it fakes the interface so that it automounts and can autorun a driver install when you plug it in to a new machine. I don't have a MagicJack, but that's my guess.

 

[sactoking]

I never really gave this much thought, but really, why is C the main drive in Windows, while A and B are reserved for floppy drives? Wouldn't it make more sense if the main drive was A, and they had treated floppies like cdrom drives where they just take the next available letter?

Random thought of the day.

For the same reason that the universal Save symbol is a floppy disk: it just is.

More precisely, that's what the old people who run things grew up on and are used to. Wait until the baby boomers have mostly died off and X/Y/whatever will probably change it.

 

[Kadarin]

The Unix filesystem concept is so much better it's ridiculous.

 

[HeXen]

good old tape drives....

ha, i had that exact same puter. i couldnt remember what it was called though.
had a few game carts for it.

The Unix filesystem concept is so much better it's ridiculous.

why's that?