Changing Active Partition Drive Letter

[seekermeister]

As I'm sometimes known to do, I made what I hope is not a fatal mistake. I forgot to disconnect my other HDs while installing XP x64 on my raid array. The result is that it's drive letter is now G:, instead of C: as it should be. This is causing some problems with programs and patches that are apparently hardwired to install in C:. A game patch, that I tried just a bit earlier, apparently thought that it was on C:, which is another OS, and tried to find the game location according to the drive designations in that OS, instead of x64, and found nothing because that drive letter is not used.

I can't change it with Windows, and when I once tried doing this with DDS from desktop, I quickly learned that was a bad mistake, because the OS became unbootable. Perhaps the same would be true if booting to DDS and changing it there without the OS actually being operating, but that is the basis of my question...will it work or would it just be another disaster?

[Brian K]

seekermeister,

I think the only solution is to start again. Sorry.

[MudCrab]

I agree with Brian. I've made that mistake myself years ago and lived with Windows on F: for a couple years before reinstalling. I tried several methods of fixing it, but they resulted in an unstable/confused system.

When you install XP, make sure that the correct drive letter is shown for the destination partition when you select it. Whatever letter is shown on that screen will be used.

If the XP destination partition doesn't exist and you create it during the installation, XP will assign it the next available drive letter. If this happens, after creating the partition, cancel the installation and restart it. The new partition should be correctly assigned as C:.

[seekermeister]

It sounds as though it is believed that DDS is not a solution to the problem, and that I shall accept. Perhaps there is no solution, except starting over, but thinking on this I have begun to wonder if I disconnect the extra drives and then boot to the XP CD's Recovery Console, and run bootcfg to rebuild the boot.ini (necessary because the raid array's OS doesn't have one because it is using the boot.ini of the OS on the first PATA), and then run CHKDSK /R, to hopefully creat a NTLDR, if this would fix the problem booting the OS and have it designated as C:? I may be beating a dead horse, but I really don't want to bury it before it has had a chance to snort again.

[Brian K]

Originally Posted by seekermeister

I may be beating a dead horse,

Unfortunately your registry is full of references to the G: drive.

[jonyjoe81]

There has to be a way of changing the "mounted device" drive letter, I have seen people in other threads change it when a restored drive is restored and the wrong mounted drive letter is restored. Usually the win98 bootdisk is used or a manual modification of the registry is performed.

If any problems result it will probably be from a "partition ID" drive letter mismatch and that can also be fixed.

I ran some experiments a while back in trying to change the "mounted devices" drive letter from c: to k: using a bartpe and manually modifying the registry (to match the "partition ID" drive letter which was k: ) , but everytime I rebooted the "mounted devices" drive letter was back to c:. I think it would have worked better if I had tried to change a k: to a c: than vice versa.


http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=174958

[K0LO]

Originally Posted by jonyjoe81

There has to be a way of changing the "mounted device" drive letter...

Yes, you can change the drive letter of the booting partition to be C:, but that's not enough. Brian has nailed the problem in post #5. There will be so many references to the wrong system drive letter in the registry that in most cases it is easier to just reinstall.

[thecreator]

Originally Posted by seekermeister

As I'm sometimes known to do, I made what I hope is not a fatal mistake. I forgot to disconnect my other HDs while installing XP x64 on my raid array. The result is that it's drive letter is now G:, instead of C: as it should be. This is causing some problems with programs and patches that are apparently hardwired to install in C:. A game patch, that I tried just a bit earlier, apparently thought that it was on C:, which is another OS, and tried to find the game location according to the drive designations in that OS, instead of x64, and found nothing because that drive letter is not used.

I can't change it with Windows, and when I once tried doing this with DDS from desktop, I quickly learned that was a bad mistake, because the OS became unbootable. Perhaps the same would be true if booting to DDS and changing it there without the OS actually being operating, but that is the basis of my question...will it work or would it just be another disaster?

Hi seekermeister,

I don't have a Raid setup, but over the weekend I moved Hard Drives around. The Drive Letters changed on me, however, I used Acronis Disk Director Suite 10 to change the Drive Letters around, including Drive C:

In fact Drive C: and Drive D: both had to be changed to the other.
In order to make the switch, I had to change Drive D: to a Drive Letter not in use and reboot. Then I switched Drive C: to Drive D: then changed Drive not in use to Drive C: and rebooted.

[Brian K]

thecreator,

That's interesting. What partitions were on your HDs prior to the weekend? How many OS? How did you move the HDs around? What happened to the drive letters?

[thecreator]

Originally Posted by Brian K

thecreator,

That's interesting. What partitions were on your HDs prior to the weekend? How many OS? How did you move the HDs around? What happened to the drive letters?

Hi Brian,

I have three Hard Drives in this one computer.

Originally 30 GB with Windows ME and System_Save partition IDE Drive
40 GB with Windows ME and Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 3 on FAT32 partition, evenly partitioned. IDE Drive
500 GB with multiple partitions including Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 3 on a NTFS File System.

The 30 GB Hard Drive was failing. BelArc reported Smart Failure, so I ordered a 400 GB Hard Drive. Too large, so I removed a 320 GB Hard Drive I had in a NetGear Storage Central Unit and used that new Hard Drive there.

Still, the 320 Hard Drive was too large, so I put that in another computer with a TV Tuner Card and pulled out a 160 GB Hard Drive IDE for the computer with Smart Failure.

The 160 GB is Cable Select as are all my Hard Drives. It is installed as a Master and the 40 GB Hard Drive is the Slave.

Normally I boot the Slave up, first in line, via BIOS, then using BootIt NG, I am able to boot each Hard Drive seperately. I like BootIt NG, because it allows me to continue to use Windows XP Boot Manager to control the Boot on the Hard Drives.

Acronis boots the operating systems, not the Hard Drives.

Before I made any changes, I imaged the partitions seperately, not the entire Hard Drive, because I was changing the size of the partitions.

I was able to install the images into larger partitions without problems.

I used Acronis Disk Director Suite 10 to delete and reformat the Hard Drives as well as partitioning them.

I did this through the oerating system of Windows XP Home Edition and worked out real well.

I had the time and patience and thought it out in advance. Only trouble I ran into was with the Drive Letters being switched around.

Windows could not change the Boot Drive Assignment, but Acronis Disk Director 10 could, but I had to reboot for it to work and it worked.

None of my Hard Drives are in a Raid configuration.