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DADDY BOB'S COMPUTER Q & A
March 29, 2009
Q.
I installed a second hard drive, and now my
CD drives have changed drive letters. Can I
change the new hard drive to something other
than the "D" drive?
A.
Yes, you can change any of your drives to
another drive letter. By default, Drive A
and B are reserved for floppies, and
although most new computers do not have a
floppy, these are best not used for other
devices.
Drive C
is usually reserved for the root drive in
Windows systems, and although the root drive
can be anything, unless you are really sure
you know what you are doing, it is best left
at C. If your computer came with the restore
files on the hard drive rather than on a CD
or DVD, then it will usually be designated
as the D drive. However, for the remaining
drive possibilities, E through Z, you are
pretty much free to assign any of these to
whatever device you choose.
When you
add devices, Windows will usually assign the
next available letter to it by default, with
one possible exception. If you have but one
hard drive C, and you install a second hard
drive, it will usually take the letter D and
move all the other drives down one letter. I
suspect that this is what you have
experienced.
This can
cause some programs to stop working
correctly if they are expecting to find
files on a drive that has changed. In this
case, you can change the new drive to
another drive letter and the process is
similar in all versions of Windows since
Windows 98. Note however, this drive letter
change will probably not be permanent for
removable drives like an external hard drive
or a USB thumb drive if the drive is
removed.
Right
click on My computer on the desktop or in
the Start menu and select Manage. Double
click on Storage, then Disk Management and
this dialog will be displayed. It has been
reduced to fit on this page and is not as
clear as desired. To see it full size, just
click on it. Click Back to return to this
article.
In the
top section all the drives on the computer
are listed along with information about that
device. Note that the partitions are shown
as separate drives even though they may be
located on the same physical drive.
In the
bottom section, all your disks are listed in
the first column, and their description to
the right. Hard drives are designated by
numbers starting with zero, and the CDs or
DVD are listed starting with CD-ROM 0. Note
that even though your computer may have DVD
writable drives, they are designated here as
CD-ROMs.
Remember
that so far as a computer is concerned, the
number zero (0) is just as significant as
any other number. Counting in a computer
starts with 0 not 1 as we were taught in
school.
Disk 0 is
the primary drive and in my case, it is
divided into 4 partitions. The first is one
used as part of the recovery system and the
other three are my C, D and E drives. It is
best that no changes be made to any drives
that are part of the recovery system or the
C drive. My external hard drive is shown as
Disk 1, and designated as drive (H).
In the in
case where another hard drive has been
added, it will appear as Disk 1 and in the
right pane be designated as drive (D). So,
to change this drive to something other than
the assigned Drive D, right click on the
drive name in the right column. Select Drive
letter and path from the menu and when the
dialog opens, click on the Change button.
Click on the little down arrow next to the
drive letter shown and a drop down list will
display all the available letters. You can
choose whatever you want and click OK.
You will
be shown a message stating that if you
change the drive letter that some programs
may not work, but for most cases, this can
be ignored and you just click Yes.
If the
letter that you want to assign to a given
device is already taken, then just change
the device that has it to another one first.
Other than drives A, B C, and any letter
assigned to a recovery partition, there is
nothing sacred about the drive letter
assignments and they can be changed to
whatever you like. |
