drive letter allocation after new build

chud

chud

chud

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29 Aug 2006
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5
Just completed my first build and all working OK. Installed XP last night and it has put itself onto the G: drive. C, D, E and F are allocated to card reader (integrated with floppy) and optical drives.

Two questions really:

a) does this matter? my understanding is probably not, although some software may only install to a C: drive - is this likely to be a problem these days?

b) how could I change this if necessary? I can't use Windows to reallocate letters as it's installed itself on G: so assume it would mean a reinstallation. However I didn't see any option when starting things up (either in Windows or the BIOS) to adjust this. How do these get allocated - given that all my previous PCs have had the hard disk allocated as C: and optical drives after that? Motherboard is an ASUS M2N-E btw.

Thanks
 
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as far as i am aware, it should not be a problem because when installing a program or something it will automatically save to the default storage location... in your case G: drive...

i wouldn't worry about it :cool:
 
To change a drive letter (although you can't do this with the system partition - so it'll still be G) ...

Right click on My Computer ... Manage ... Disk management (on the left) ... Right click a drive and say change drive letter.

It doesn't actually matter though, there won't be any problems at all.
 
My HTPC Shuttle system has a media port, and the motherboard manual suggests to unplug the media ports before installing xp!

Either live with it or re-install with the media port disconnected. Bit of a pain but dont think you have any other choice.
 
It is possible, albeit very long winded, to change the system drive letter, so that it becomes C.

And whilst after doing it I had Windows on C, it broke every single other program that was installed in the process. Not worth it.
 
Thanks guys - looks like I'll be leaving it as is. I thought of unplugging the card reader on a re-install but I can't do that with the optical drives which are also allocated ahead of the hard drive.
 
Its a bug in the windows installer, In about 1 in 10 installs, I seem to get a random drive letter instead of C.

Its a right pain, as several applications I use, and 1 game insist on having a patcher installed on the C drive, and fail to run when windows does this.

Normally if this happens, i just reformat again, and reinstall, and next time round it's back to drive C again.
 
If you have more than one hard drive you can use a free tool that Western Digital has on there site (Data Lifeguard) that enables you to copy the contents of Drive A to drive B which also works on boot drives. You could assign your card reader to whatever you want put in the second drive and make it C, then copy everything across.
 
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