Partitioning

Just received an Inspiron 5150 with 40GB HD (C and DVD/CD-RW combo
drive (D. Partitioned the C: drive using Partition Magic 8.0 and
wound up with the new partition as E:. How do I get the combo drive
to be E: and the new partition to be D:? Thanks.

wrote:

Just received an Inspiron 5150 with 40GB HD (C and DVD/CD-RW combo
drive (D. Partitioned the C: drive using Partition Magic 8.0 and
wound up with the new partition as E:. How do I get the combo drive
to be E: and the new partition to be D:? Thanks.

- Right click "My Computer"
- Select "Manage"
- Select "Disk Management"
- Right-click whatever drive you're working with and select "Change
Drive Letter and Paths..."

The rest, as they say, is all downhill!

Larry

Tom McCune wrote:

wrote in news:gkie705s1l9ev64tp5mn0vasc9k17kah1j@
4ax.com:


Just received an Inspiron 5150 with 40GB HD (C and DVD/CD-RW combo
drive (D. Partitioned the C: drive using Partition Magic 8.0 and
wound up with the new partition as E:. How do I get the combo drive
to be E: and the new partition to be D:? Thanks.


I did that and thought it would be no big deal. It was a year or so ago,
and I don't recall specifics, but there were already some settings for the
DVD/CD drive as D: that were annoying, and I soon went back to the new
partition being E:.

That's been the standard since before I can remember, i.e., drive
letters are assigned first to the real devices, C: & D:, then to any
additional partions, E:. I don't think I'd try to monkey with that. Is
it a problem for you?

Yes, make them X and Y if you like. Then change again to D and E.



"Lawrence Glasser" wrote in message
...
wrote:

Just received an Inspiron 5150 with 40GB HD (C and DVD/CD-RW combo
drive (D. Partitioned the C: drive using Partition Magic 8.0 and
wound up with the new partition as E:. How do I get the combo drive
to be E: and the new partition to be D:? Thanks.

- Right click "My Computer"
- Select "Manage"
- Select "Disk Management"
- Right-click whatever drive you're working with and select "Change
Drive Letter and Paths..."

The rest, as they say, is all downhill!

Larry

I always make my optical drives Q (and R if I have two) It gets them out of
the way and harks back to the early days of DOS where the CD was assigned Q.

tom
"Gus" wrote in message
...
Tom McCune wrote:

wrote in news:gkie705s1l9ev64tp5mn0vasc9k17kah1j@
4ax.com:


Just received an Inspiron 5150 with 40GB HD (C and DVD/CD-RW combo
drive (D. Partitioned the C: drive using Partition Magic 8.0 and
wound up with the new partition as E:. How do I get the combo drive
to be E: and the new partition to be D:? Thanks.


I did that and thought it would be no big deal. It was a year or so
ago,
and I don't recall specifics, but there were already some settings for
the
DVD/CD drive as D: that were annoying, and I soon went back to the new
partition being E:.

That's been the standard since before I can remember, i.e., drive
letters are assigned first to the real devices, C: & D:, then to any
additional partions, E:. I don't think I'd try to monkey with that. Is
it a problem for you?

Tom McCune wrote:

Gus wrote:

That's been the standard since before I can remember, i.e., drive
letters are assigned first to the real devices, C: & D:, then to any
additional partions, E:. I don't think I'd try to monkey with that. Is
it a problem for you?

Obviously it is not a problem for me, or I wouldn't have expressed my
preference for it by changeing to it. But doing so, does screw up software
that has been installed to use the CD drive as D. I just found it easier
to return the CD drive designation to the original setting.

Exactly. In Win9x implementations, adding logical drives by
repartitioning with PM or whatever pushed the CD-ROM drive
designations to the back of the list. Unfortunately, Windows
remembered where it had been installed from, and every time you
had to put the CD back in for Windows to find something it
needed, you always got a "can't find it, tell me where it is"
message that finally allowed you to tell it that the D: drive it
had installed from and was looking for was now K:, and that's
where it will find the factory CD.

I was pleasantly surprised when, after partitioning my new D4400
with XPPro, that D: and E:, my CD drives, remained D: and E:, and
that the logical drives I established picked up with F:. Oh,
frabjous joy; changing M$ stuff requiring the original CD be put
in was no longer a major PITA.

Another change from the Win9x practice: adding a second physical
HD to a Win9x machine resulted in it getting the D: designation,
with all the logical drives on the first HD going up a letter,
then the logical drives for the second HD coming after those.
[And pushing the CD drive even further away from where M$ would
look for the factory CD. ;-] I just put a second HD in my
D4400, and under XP it picked up where the first HD's partitions
left off. No insisting on being D:.
--
OJ III
[Email sent to Yahoo addy is burned before reading.
Lower and crunch the sig and you'll net me at comcast]

On Sat, 10 Apr 2004 14:52:25 -0400, in alt.sys.pc-clone.dell, Ogden Johnson
III wrote:

Another change from the Win9x practice: adding a second physical
HD to a Win9x machine resulted in it getting the D: designation,
with all the logical drives on the first HD going up a letter,
then the logical drives for the second HD coming after those.
[And pushing the CD drive even further away from where M$ would
look for the factory CD. ;-] I just put a second HD in my
D4400, and under XP it picked up where the first HD's partitions
left off. No insisting on being D:.

The 'Win9x practice' was to assign drive letters to primary partitions on
all hard drives before assigning letters to logical drives in extended
partitions.

Logical drives on the first hard drive would only change letters if you
created a primary partition on the new drive.

If you wanted to keep the drive letters for the first hard drive the same,
you just needed to create an extended partition on the new drive instead of
a primary partition. Then all the partitions on the first drive would have
been assigned letters before the partitions on the second drive.

--
Nick

"Nick" wrote in message
...

On Sat, 10 Apr 2004 14:52:25 -0400, in alt.sys.pc-clone.dell, Ogden
Johnson
III wrote:

Another change from the Win9x practice: adding a second physical
HD to a Win9x machine resulted in it getting the D: designation,
with all the logical drives on the first HD going up a letter,
then the logical drives for the second HD coming after those.
[And pushing the CD drive even further away from where M$ would
look for the factory CD. ;-] I just put a second HD in my
D4400, and under XP it picked up where the first HD's partitions
left off. No insisting on being D:.

The 'Win9x practice' was to assign drive letters to primary partitions on
all hard drives before assigning letters to logical drives in extended
partitions.

Are you sure that it wasn't the practice of assigning drive letters to
primary partitions on all drives (hard or cd or whatever) before assigning
letters elsewhere?

I seem to always notice that (assuming only 1 partition per drive) the
primary/master was always C: no matter what. And if something was on the
secondary/master (no matter what it was) it became d:

....[thwack]...

On Sat, 17 Apr 2004 04:55:18 GMT, in alt.sys.pc-clone.dell, "Thomas G.
Marshall" . com wrote:

Are you sure that it wasn't the practice of assigning drive letters to
primary partitions on all drives (hard or cd or whatever) before assigning
letters elsewhere?

I seem to always notice that (assuming only 1 partition per drive) the
primary/master was always C: no matter what. And if something was on the
secondary/master (no matter what it was) it became d:

Yes, I'm quite sure. CD-ROM drives were assigned drive letters after the
internal hard drives.

A common plea in Win9x newsgroups was: "I just added a new hard drive (or
partitioned my existing drive), and now my CD-ROM drive letter is different
and that broke a whole bunch of stuff. HELP!"

This happened to me the first time I added a new hard drive to a PC with a
CD-ROM drive. Ever since, I've made a habit of always changing the
CD-ROM drive to 'M:' when I get a new computer; that leaves me lots of room
to add new hard drive partitions without changing the CD-ROM letter.


There were also regular pleas for help in the Win9x newsgroups from people
who added a second hard drive and discovered that some of the partitions on
their first hard drive (i.e., D: and above) wound up with new drive letters.
(Caused by creating a primary partition on the new drive.) This also
happened to me the first time I added a second hard drive to a PC.


Note: the newer operating systems allow drive letters to be changed by the
user, but I believe most current versions of Windows still default to the
same letter sequence that has been used since MS-DOS days.


Here's part (somewhat edited) of a canned post I used to post regularly when
I was hanging around in Win9x newsgroups:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here's some more detailed information on how drive letters are assigned:

The first floppy disk drive will always be 'A:', a second floppy (if
present) will be always be 'B:'.

When MS-DOS/Win9x starts up, it assigns drive letter C: to the first primary
partition on the master drive on IDE channel 0. Then it assigns drive
letters in sequence to the first primary partition (if any) on additional
internal hard drives.

Once the first primary partition on each drive is assigned a drive letter,
then the OS starts over with logical drives in extended partitions. Any
logical drives on the first physical drive are assigned letters first, then
the logical drives on each additional physical drive in sequence.

After the first primary partitions and all the logical drives in extended
partitions are assigned letters, the OS then assigns letters to any
additional primary partitions on the hard drives, starting with the master
drive.

Once all the hard drives are done, the OS then assigns letters to CD-ROM
drives, Zip drives, etc.

So if you have two physical hard drives you can, to some extent, change the
order in which drive letters are assigned by choosing which type of
partition(s) will be on each drive. You have to have at least one primary
partition on your master (boot) drive; on the slave drive it's optional.

CD-ROM letter drive letters will always be assigned *after* the hard
drive letters. You can go into Device Manager and specify the drive
letters for CD-ROMs. On a new system, I usually set my CD-ROM drive to a
high letter (M:, for example) so it doesn't get changed if I add a new hard
drive or create more partitions.)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm not sure about the order for external USB/Firewire drives, but they were
probably done after all the internal IDE/SCSI drives (of whatever type).
And I have no idea about the order used when a system has both IDE and SCSI
drives; I would _guess_ that the IDE drives would have been assigned letters
first, but that's just a guess.

--
Nick

"Natural laws have no pity." R.A.H.

"Nick" coughed up the following...
...

....[thwack]...


Note: the newer operating systems allow drive letters to be changed by
the
user, but I believe most current versions of Windows still default to
the
same letter sequence that has been used since MS-DOS days.

By default, my WinXP installation ordered C, D, and E: this way:

primary/master (HD)
secondary/master (DVD)
primary/slave (HD)

Thanks for the historical info! I'd forgotten all that!

Thomas