Change A Drive Letter From Outside The OS?
Aug 20, 2010
I had windows 7 on a SSD drive, assigned C: by windows 7, but it was full so I decided I'd clone it onto a bigger SSD drive using Acronis Disk Director. Went swimmingly I thought, both drives contained the same data. I wasn't too sure what my next step ought to be, whether acronis will have sorted it so that my new SSD now has the orginal SSD's drive letter or not. If it did, it will be mean a simple transition. But you guessed it, it left the drive letters the same, so when I booted up, it loaded from the orginal SSD. I then changed the original SSD drive letter, and used EasyBCD to remove the original boot and create a new one with the new SSD. Unfortunate now when I boot up Windows 7 I get a Preparing Your Desktop message for a couple of mins, but it's then followed by a screen with a cursor but no desktop icons or taskbar. It also seemed unresponsive to keyboard strokes.
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Nov 16, 2009
I lost my Event Viewer, and had to do a repair installation to fix it. Unfortunately, during the repair install, Windows decided to rename my second HD as the D: drive... it was K: before that. Now I cannot access any of my docs, pictures, music, or videos through the normal means... they don't show up in libraries or explorer, and apps like Restorator and Sure Thing (CD labeler) cannot find them. I think that means the paths are broken..?
It won't allow me to rename the HD back into K: (it's not listed as available). I can access the data by clicking Computer > D, and I can see the data is there, but its unusable as of now. Any ideas?
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Aug 21, 2012
I have a USB external hard drive that I keep all my documents etc on (had it for years)I upgraded from Vista Home to & Home Premium then had to upgrade recently to Professional to run my Sage. Through all these upgrades my ext. drive ran fine. Occasionally the drvie letter would change if I had something else plugged into the USB, this was always easily corected in disk management by changing the drive path.The connection on the case packed up so I had to get the drive put into a new case, now when I plug it in the drive is assigned G instead of F, I tried to change the drive letter allocation in Disk Management but it won't let me as the program still thinks I have a second ext. hard drive which is labelled F. I suspect this has happened because when the usb connection broke the drive was disconnected suddenly instead of a proper eject.How do I get Disk Management to remove the inactive drive - i can't find any obvious way - eject, delete etc are all missing when I click on tools or tasks.
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Apr 14, 2011
i want to change a HDD drive letter from F to D, this drive has games and apps installed on it, will those still run ok after i change the letters?
FYI the OS is on a seperate drive C
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Nov 4, 2010
I have a triple boot system:
C - Windows 7 Ultimate - SSD array D - Data - WD 640 spinner 1 E - Windows 7 Pro - 1st partition on WD 640 spinner 2 F - Windows 7 Enterprise - 2nd partition WD 640 spinner 2
Using Acronis True Image 2010, I keep 2 images of each OS on D.I'd like to put an image of C onto E, then make some changes to it. I think I tried this back in the Vista beta days, but can't recall if I ever got it to work, tempted to say "no".
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Jan 17, 2009
Dual Boot Windows 7 x64 beta
XP x32
After installing Windows 7 into a new partition, the OS started up fine from the new dual boot screen, but I didn't have access to my Win XP partition from within explorer. In disk management, I was able to add a letter to my WinXP volume (I took the next available "O") and it popped up in explorer no problem. However, after restarting, Win 7 begins to load, then BSODs way too fast to think about catching with camera.
I got the option to run startup repair at the restart, and I did so. The conclusion there was that I had plugged in a device during the last session that was now causing problems. That is bogus, unless that device is my newly lettered partition. I read many a thread in here about re-lettering a partition that had lost its letter in the install (usually the other OS volume in a dual-boot environment), but didn't see those posters then have issues upon restart.
I can boot into XP, although here now NONE of my drives have letters.
Any Help? I really was diggin' my Windows 7 time, and really enjoyed taking advantage of all my RAM and x64 versions of CS4 and CAD.
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Sep 24, 2012
I want to change the drive letter of the drive on which Windows 7 is installed.It is currently F:, and I want to change it to K:It is not possible from the Disk Management as I tried.
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Dec 27, 2009
My Floppy Drive has the drive letter assignment (A). I would rather have it be (F). The traditional way to change drive letters is under disk management on right-click of My Computer. However, Floppy drives are not visible in the list. How can I change the letter?
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Dec 28, 2012
I have built a computer for video editing and named the hard drives (C for the main drive, (M for the drive holding my music, (P for the drive for photos, and I named the drive to store my videos (V. However when I tried to write path to the V: drive I was told V: is an invalid path, I suppose because of the confusion with a followed by a / which would give you a / which can be confused with V but is not exactly the same. I went to My Computer and right clicked on the V: drive and clicked on "rename" in the drop down menu and changed the name to "Storage" but the (V persisted. Then I renamed again and named the drive "Storage (S" and now in "My Computer" the drive is shown as "Storage (S (V" When writing a path to put videos on this drive can I use either S:/ or V:/ to get videos into this drive? Is there some way to remove the (V
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Oct 14, 2009
Had an XP dual boot with Windows 7 RTM. Deleted XP C: drive and moved RTM D: drive over into it's space. I would like to keep and license this installation using retail Windows 7 Ultimate Signature Edition received with party pack.
Is there a way to change the Windows 7 D: drive to C: by running a repair install (upgrade over OS) as I would like to find a way to do this without having to do a clean install.
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Oct 18, 2009
In 7 everything is all right.7 is c: and the boot partition is hidden.
But in XP the hidden partition is c: and visible.XP is d:,so some programs use default dir can't work.I tried disk management to change xp to c: but didn't succeed.
Anyway to change the drive letters and hide the 100m partition?
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Jul 25, 2009
I deleted my existing OS then created two new partitions on the same drive. Then I installed Vista on one partition and that partition was properly named "c" as ususal. Then I started Windows 7 setup.exe from a different hard drive and let Windows 7 install itself into its own partition. When I got to "My Computer" the Windows 7 partition was labelled as "I" instead of the expected "C" which had never happend before when I did the same thing.
Does anyone know a save way to label the Win 7 drive as "C" while in Windows 7?
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Nov 4, 2012
Ok so here's a little backstory before I jump into my problem. I've got 2 harddrives installed; a SSD and a regular HDD. The SSD is labeled C: since it has Windows and other core programs while the HDD is labeled B:. The solid state is almost full while the regular one still has over a terabyte of space left to fill up. Normally, I have no problem installing new programs or games to the HDD till now.When I went to install my new game on B: it kept giving me invalid directory errors. So I went to the game's forums and discovered that the reason that issue was happening was because the game recognized drive letters A and B as floppy drives as opposed to hard drive letters. Further investigation revealed that apparently this little bit of design is hardcoded into the game and there really isn't any work around except changing the drive letter. So I looked up how to do so and made the change.....then the problems started.After changing the drive letter from B: to Z: I kept getting 'path does not exist' error message with features and hardware connected to Windows on C:.
For example, my DVD-ROM drive is labeled D: and everytime I tried to install the game after the drive letter change I got 'D:\, path does not exist. make sure the path is correct and try again' error. Another example, when trying to go to Device Manager to start a fix I couldn't because of 'explorer.exe, path does not exist' error. Basically, every step I tried where anything was connected to C: or D: I got the 'path does not exist' error. At this point I've done a system restore to before the drive letter changed and I'm running as I was before trying to install the game.My question is, how do I change the driver letter of my HDD without getting all the 'path does not exist' errors? If that's not possible, how do I fix the 'path does not exist errors' when the path starts with C: or D:? Is it done the same way I would with a program through the properties tab in the target path section and start in section? Or is there something more invasive I need to do when the path issue starts with C: and D:
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Nov 3, 2011
I recently set up a new Systemax SYX-1113 PC with a SSD (C:) for Win 7 Pro and a 1TB HDD (G:) for my user libraries and programs. I need to upgrade the HDD from a 1GB to a 2 GB drive so I cloned the 1TB (G:) drive to a new 2TB (H:) drive. My new challenge is figuring out how to switch the drive letters on the two HDDs so that Windows looks to the new drive for the user directories and program files. I tried using disk manager in Windows 7 and got the BSOD - I guess it didn't like me changing the location of the active user profile. I assume I need to boot the PC from something other than the C: drive to make the change.
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Dec 5, 2009
Windows 7, 32 bit, 12 partitions on 3 hdd's, Windows 7 on C:
When migrating to Windows 7 I first tried to update my Vista which I had used happily for 2 years. Installation went fine, but there were too many problems after.
So I bought a new 1 GB hdd and installed Windows 7 there from scratch. It is on a partition with drive letter C. I copied most of my old partitions to the new hdd, went fine.
When trying to delete one of the old hdd's with EASEUS Partition Master Home 4.1.1 manager software, there is one partition on it (which once before was called C, then successfully renamed to Z ) which I can't delete. I has on it the following folders:
$RECYCLE.BIN
Boot
System Volume Information (locked)
-->and files:
BOOTSECT.BAK
bootmgr
They are only 30,5 MB in size. So I resized the partition to 1 GB.
EASEUS characterizes it as Status = System, Pri/Log = Primary. Windows Disc manager characterizes it as System, Active, Primary Partition.
My question is: Can I change the drive letter from Z to B without risking the whole system to be unbootable? (and maybe never be bootable again?) When trying I just get the usual Windows warning.
I would be most grateful for an answer explaning what and why or why not.
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Oct 17, 2012
So I can't change the drive letter. Do I need to use Partition Magic again? The more I keep hearing/reading "do you have a backup?" - makes me believe the tool (OS) isn't capable of handling/accessing the data properly.
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Jun 2, 2009
The system:
Drive 1: vista boot loader, vista32, two partitions (vista on C, some stuff on D), both NTFS
drive 2: broken grub loader (never mind actually), one ntfs partition with some porn, games, and other usual stuff . named E.
so then, i copy the 7100 x64 distr into my flash drive, boot it, and install our beloved 7even into the drive 2. it does not ask me anything, write its boot loader to drive 1, lets me choose which OS to boot into each time... perfect. BUT(T):
7even named her own partition C, while drive 1 partitions became D and E. i swapped last two easily, using 7even's disk management utility. that's 1 of 3 and that's not enough. i really want 7even's partition to have the same letter as in vista. i even googled it, and didn't find any answers.
7even is still unconfigured, so it would not be a problem to reinstall it. even more, if it's really necesarry, i can move all of drive 1's data somewhere else, so i can format it.
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Jun 13, 2012
I have an OCZ vertex 3 as my boot drive and a 2TB Hitachi drive as my storage drive. When I installed the system, I changed the 2TB drive letter name to G. Recently, I installed a card reader into my system, which somehow made one of the card slots G and the 2TB D. Now I can't run any of my programs installed on the mechanical drive. I can't even open diskpart
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Apr 25, 2011
I have Win 7 home premium on an HP laptop with 4 usb ports. I have 2 Western Digital Elements 1.5 TB drives for backups. If I plug in one of the drives, Win assigns a drive letter, but if I add the second one it doesn't.
To troubleshoot, I've plugged each drive into every usb port on the laptop, and each port reads each drive alone, but if I plug in the second drive while the first is still in, it shoes up in devices but does not get a drive letter. I tried assigning a different drive letter to the device plugged in first, but Win still doesn't assign a letter to the second drive.
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Oct 12, 2012
One drive appears to have duplicated itself by populating any drive letter thats free! Tried simply deleting the ones not needed but they reappear?
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Jan 18, 2013
I decided to just revert to my old XP64. At first I was gonna try to dual-boot, but the fly in the ointment was all I had was an image on my external HD, which has about 100G of other stuff on it. My disc drive would not for the life of me burn an ISO image on any of my three DVD types. And the process of trying to find how to fix the drive problem and/or create just a bootable PARTITION on a HD without effecting everything else just drove me insane...which is kind of where I am now. After a week now I just have to get back to my project. lol And if that means no fancy windows 7 internet experience..while attempting a dual-boot scenerio workaround, I shrunk partition C and created a new 5G partition at the end of it. In EaseUS, I assigned it letter B and I set it to active, figuring it was to be bootable (wrong, I know). Additionally near the same time in Folder Properties, I unhid system files, folders...etc.
NOW the System drive showed as F! Then, attempting to use EasyBCD, it told me it could not find the BCD files to begin. So, naturally it had to do with that.I thought maybe it should have been B, but why would Ease US give me that letter option?After showing Easy BCD the file it seems to be OK....there. Also in Startup & Recovery it is listed in System Startup as the default system. But is it OK?Also, should it also be active. Did I inadvertently switch it by making the new partition active? What should I do to get it to boot properly. I AM planning on booting XP from a flash drive anyway, but still.
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Jun 18, 2009
My backup software's profile database is expecting to backup to H:, which was the drive letter for my external backup drive back in XP. This drive comes up in Windows 7 as K, because Windows 7 has given my four usb card reader drives the letters F,G,H,I.
Disk Management will not show these four card reader drives unless media is inserted (connected vs. disconnected). I have changed the letters for F,G,I to T,U,W, but only because I have those types of cards (SD, CF, MS)...I do not have an XD or SmartMedia card for the one dang drive I really need to change.
What are my options, other than buying the cheapest SM card I can find to make the drive visible for this task? The SmartSyncPro database has many profiles, so remapping all those to point to K would be a major hassle.
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Jul 16, 2011
I am running Windows 7 Pro. Have a external dual dock connected to a estata port. One of the drives assigned letter K often comes up as E and I have to change as application is looking for K. Another disk in this dock works fine. No problems. why this might be happening or anyway to prevent? Seems like when I go to disk management and assign K it should stay that way.
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Jul 23, 2009
Got this from directory opus site, but made new registry file for you.
1. - unzip drive icons to - C:DRIVE ICONS
2. run registry file
3. reboot pc
Voila!
to undo run the restoredriveicons reg file.
here is original link - http://resource.dopus.com/viewtopic.php?t=7089
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Mar 22, 2012
I have a new copy of windows y 64 bit ultimate. I currently use w7 64 home premium and it is on C drive and the drive is a sata 2 drive. But when I build my new system I want to install onto a new drive which is sata 6.0 and I have made a partition on that drive (letter M) for the O/S to be installed onto ( ive allowed 150Gb ).
So my question is when I build my system and am ready to install w7 can I install onto drive M on the new sata 6.0 drive?
I will unplug the old boot drive as I understand windows will boot to that if I dont unplug it, then when I have installed new O/S on the new drive, partition "M", I will plug it back in and format the old boot drive.
So then windows will boot to drive/partition M, if that works, and C drive will just become a data drive. I understand I probably will have to do some messing in bios, so any help with that will be good.
this will be my 1st build but I am not to bad with computers and have changed cpu's/HD's/gpu's/fans etc etc. but not mobo's and cases. And never changed a O/S onto another drive with a different boot drive letter.
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Nov 21, 2010
I just built a new computer which I am trying to set up identical to two of my present ones. The first terabyte hard drive is divided into 5 partitions, C thru G. Windows 7 is on C and Windows XP is on D. The other three partitions are categorized storage. I also added two more terabyte drives which are supposed to be H & I. Since my CD/DVD rom had assumed "H" in Windows 7, I reassigned the drive letter "J" to it. When I installed what was supposed to be my "H" drive, it showed up as "I". When I attempted to reassign the drive letter "H" to it, "H" is not on the list of available drives, So I tried renaming it to "Q" and then back to see if "H" would show up. It didn't. I went ahead and put the final drive in It was supposed to be "I" drive and indeed it came up correctly as "I" drive. So everything is in order now except for my "H" drive which still remains as "Q" until I can figure out how to make the "H" drive letter become available again. This si important to me since I do regular synchronization between my other computers and the drive letters need to be matched on all of them.I am not on the new computer right now, but on my last built one which has the same setup. I didn't seem to have any problem on this one since the drive letters are all on order. I've never had a lick of trouble getting them right on the XP partitions.What do I need to do to get "H" back on the list of available drive letters?
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Mar 31, 2009
I previously shared my iTunes library from my desktop computer which was running Xp x64 Professional, and accessed the library through a M: drive that I could access on my laptop and other computers in the house. I set up the M drive following these instructions found here from LifeHacker and here from Microsoft previously.
I decided to try the same with 7 and everything goes according to plan until I get to the part where I go to add the new "M" drive and I can not click to "Assign the following drive letter" followed by letters that I can assign this new drive. I can only select "Mount in the following empty NTFS folder." Is anyone familliar with this issue and tell me what I am doing wrong?
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Sep 21, 2012
I just got a couple of new HDDs to make notebook backups (clones) on. When I first formatted each one, using a USB dock, I set the drive letter of each one to U. Everytime I change the drives, the drive letter changes itself to E. I change them back to U but they change themselves back to E the next time I put them in the dock. What is going on here and how can I keep the drive letters from changing?
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Mar 26, 2010
Recently I have found that when I attach an USB drive to my system I have to go into "Administrative Tools -> Computer Management - Disk Management" and manually change the 'Drive Letter and Path' for the drive.
Does anyone know how to get Windows to assign a drive letter to the USB drive automatically?
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Jul 16, 2010
till 2 days ago, when I connected a USB stick or any other USB device, it was given a driver letter automatically and a window prompted for which actions I want to do.Now (after a windows update?), the drive doesn't receive a drive letter automatically. I have to go into disc manager a give manually a drive letter in order to be able to use the drive.
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Nov 22, 2011
Windows 7 Ultimate How can I use a specific Letter for a drive?
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