External HD - Can't Select Change Drive Letter And Paths
Jul 27, 2014
I tried to change the drive letter because it wont appear, but it didnt work. I have tried the CMD method with the volumes but the volume did not show up. All I know is that its a G-Technology hard drive. I tried formatting it to NTFS but that wont work. Basically I tried everything and nothing works. P.S The drive is Disk1...
I'm booting off my SSD which is drive C: and I have games and programs on an extra hard drive which was origanally drive H: but after a restart it switched to I: and when I go into Disk Management to change it Drive H: isn't there.
I've installed Windows 8 starting the installer from Windows 8 RP and I've just noticed that it picked up the drive letters from the old system. Now my system drive is Y instead of C , because in the old system that partition was Y. If I try to change the drive letter in the Drive Management it gives an error. how to change system drive letter in Windows 8 RTM?
I'm just going through the process of personalizing a new Inspiron 14z with Windows 8. The one thing that has me stumped are all the partitions that ship installed on the drive, due to a combination of everything being different on Win8, Dell doing things their own way, and GPT formatting. Generally I would like to know what the heck all those partitions are for, but it's fine if that will be a slow learning process. Specifically and immediately, I need to change the drive letter assigned to the "WINRETOOLS" partition. Currently it's D:, and the problem is that for 10 years I've been using D: as my data partition, and quite a number of applications, configurations, settings, etc. assume that all my files are on D:. For instance, by having all my music on D:, I can sync iTunes library and preference files between machines, and all ratings and playlists match from one machine to the next. Same thing for my photos. Same thing for a bunch of utilities like FTP consoles, sync utilities...
In a prior version of Windows, I would just go into Disk Management, right click the partition in question, assign a different drive letter, and job done. On my machine, the 2GB WINRETOOL partition doesn't even show as having a drive letter in Disk Management, despite the fact that it's D: in Win Explorer. Additionally, the only right click option is "help". I've taken that option, and, despite its aspirations, it's not useful.
How can I change that drive letter to something else? Should WINRETOOLS even have a drive letter in Explorer (some posts I've seen indicate that it should be hidden)? If I do manage to change the drive letter, will that break its function, whatever that is?
My machine has a 500GB spinning disk, which has all the aforementioned partitions. I've shrunk the C: partition to 80GB, in preparation for creating a data partition. I have not yet formatted the unassigned space as I would like to solve this WINRETOOLS thing first. Finally, there is a 32GB SSD that I've set up as an Intel Smart Response cache, and it's no longer visible to the OS.
I am trying to get my external hard drives setup from a freshly rebooted installed computer. I recently placed an external hard drive with all my back up files on my computer, but this drive is not going to be my main drive. I have two others I will be using as a main hdd and a backup drive that are brand new.
So, the question is, if I were to use a utility like the Windows 8.1 disk management feature to either delete the drive letter or even change it to another one, will that mess up the external hard drive or even lose data? Because until I transfer my files to my backup disk I am afraid of losing my only copy of my files.
How would I set up Windows 8 so that I can edit the `path` environment variable in a fixed pitch font such as `Console` or `Lucida Console`? I don't want to change the font for other parts of Windows - only where paths are displayed. It seems I've been doing this in a terribly inappropriate font for many years and semicolons aren't great.
When I installed Win8 (at this point, updated to Win8.1 Update) on drive V:, it changed it to C:. Since I'm used to the drive letters as they used to be, I'd like to change it back to V:. I figure I'll have to change all the registry entries for installed programs from C: to V:.
How to confirm that I'll have to manually make those registry changes?
Alright, I just installed my Windows 8 Pro from a USB drive as I was installing it I was installing Windows 8 on the W:/ drive but once it was installed I came to found out that that My C:/ drive which was originally Windows 7's drive letter now belongs to Windows 8, and now the drive that is now Windows 7's is D:/ is is possible to change it back a W: drive or something? and yes, Windows 7 is the main partition on the system, I'm not sure why it changed but it's actually the first time this has happened.
My C: is a SSD Id like to have back as one disc, one partition..
The 101 mb 'unallocated' It was previously listed as " reserved system protected drive" I removed and formatted its 101 mb...back to empty, unallocated, can I lose that partition??
It shows up under disc management as a part of c...but really has no drive letter at all it just shows as C:
I have a windows to go installation in a large external hdd, so I have made a second partition to use as data storage.
Now, when I insert the disk on my "normal" windows installation I would expect the data partition to be available... Instead I have to assign a letter to be able to use it.
The disk appears to be online and once assigned a letter you can unplug it and plug it again without having to do the letter assignment again.
BUT, every time I restart the pc I have to do it all over again.
I have an SSD drive with 2 partitions on it. 1st partition has Win 7 on it as drive letter C. 2nd Partition has Win 8 on it as Drive letter W. At 1 point in time if I booted to Win 8 the drive letter would dynamically change from drive letter W to Drive letter C and make Win 7 drive letter W. The revers was true if I booted to Win 7. Something has changed somewhere, where this dynamic drive letter changing is no longer working. When I boot to Win 8 the drive letter remains to be drive letter W & Win 7 is still drive C. This is causing problems when I'm booted to Win 8 with regard to installing & using apps while in Win 8 since the C drive is really the Win 7 system drive.
How can I fix this to get back the dynamic flip flopping of drive C? I confess to being somewhat ignorant when dealing with this particular area of things.
I just recently built a new Windows 8 machine. Since I knew I was going to be getting an SSD down the road, I planned ahead:
Nutshell, the C: drive, the boot drive, is at the end of the partition, sized to 220 DB, so I knew it would be smaller than the 240/256GB drive I knew I'd eventually be getting. The Users folder is on the D: drive, so the C: partition is only the OS and apps. Everything's dandy.
I found EasyBCD and used it to move the boot manager over into the C: partition, so theoretically that's all I need to move over to the new drive. So what I want to do is move the C: partition over to the SSD, have it stay C: once it's there, and then have it boot into that partition. (Note that I cannot disconnect the hard drive when it's time to reboot because that's where the Users folder lives and I don't want to break that.)
I keep running into problems with the "keeping it C" part. When I clone the drive over, the old drive stays as C: (as you would expect), and the new drive gets a new letter. Attempts to change those letters using DISKPART from the Win 8 install DVD have been either futile or disastrous.
I've been using the free version of Macrium as my cloning / imaging tool...is there a better free tool I should be using?
This morning, my laptop wouldn't boot and I got a message saying I needed to use the recovery disk to fix the problem. A little investigating using the command prompt from that disk revealed my system and data partitions had no drive letter assigned to them. A little work with Diskpart fixed that but left me wondering what would have caused them to disappear.
That is, I can allocate it one through drive management but it still doesn't show next switch on in My Computer, so I must go in an allocate it one. Otherwise it works fine. Bit tedious after a while.
Do I have to reformat it completely to regain auto allocation of a letter?
Used to be fine, but not now. A USB 3.0 Toshiba 500 gig external drive (sealed unit) doesn't have this problem.
After last "patch-tuesday" my Windows 8.1 don't assign drive letters to hotswaped HDD's and USB keys.
When starting my backupdrive (eSATA), it is now without a drive letter, I can give it one though in disk-management, but before last tuesday, it was given a letter automatic. Same problem when I connect an USB-HDD or an USB-stick.
Is there a way to get back "autoassign of a drive letter"? (don't know the correct word for this function in English).
I have a 2TB Western Digital My Book Essentials, it's filled with tons of old photos, movies, docs, games, and I'm scared to think of what else. The SATA to USB connector broke on it, so I took the drive apart and put it inside my computer. I opened up device manager because it wasn't showing up automatically and the 2TB is showing up as unallocated, I'm freaking out now because I'm scared the data was somehow deleted.What do I do?
edit: I realize also this isn't directly related to Windows 8 (besides the fact it's the OS I'm on), but I don't know where else to post it. I'd also like to say that I had a really deep feeling the drive was going to break continually for about two weeks before it happened, so if you have a similar feeling about something, don't ignore it!
I was doing a clean-up and accidentally deleted all the environment variable paths. How I can fix this issue without having to restore or enter them 1-by-1.
I mistakenly deleted the contents of a user's account folder and was unable to replace the sub-folders manually or by pasting empty ones from another account. If I try to use the account to save files, I just get an error message saying that the folder xxx or file path doesn't exist, depending on where I am trying to save them. This is not just a long filename error and I am afraid that I have caused problems for the user that would affect any Windows 8 account he opens in future, because of Microsoft syncing.
So recently had my old Windows 7 desktop crash on me. Got a new Windows 8 desktop and since then have gotten an external enclosure to try and scrap the files off of the old hard drive, but when trying to connect the Drive into the new computer I get this issue >>
406da2a65a966887ab9d90c8eaf63677.png >> cfe542bf267bd7d2e3d07b5d317c97f4.png I have tried many troubleshooting options and everytime I try to change permission I just get this error message. a66c2f145769b4fdc1c99b4efc8356a4.png >> b95f4478b90c4265e3eba041043caf3a.png
I created restore disks for my new laptop. It gave me the option of using a USB drive, but I chose the option to create DVD disks instead. This went fine up until disk 6. I was able to finish, but the system has a problem reading the 6th disk. I cannot recreate the disks because HP, for some reason, made it so you can only do this once. I want to recreate the image on an external USB drive. Is there any way around this? HP will sell me a recovery set, but apparently only on disks.
A few months ago my laptop broke and it needed repairs. The HDD was replaced and i got my laptop back with one new HDD inside and one "broke" HDD in a bag. Later the "Repaired" Laptop crashed again so i bought a new one and took the HDD out of the old laptop. I bought a HDD case with USB connection and both of the HDD's where intact. The oldest HDD contained windows 7 and the replaced contained windows 8. Now i want to sell the Windows 8 HDD so i want it to be clean of personal files but i want it to keep windows 8. I thought the solution was to run the windows 8 on the HDD so i can use the program deletation program of that windows 8. The problem is i dont know how to run windows 8 of a hard drive. I have searched the internet but with no success.
I purchased a Seagate 1Tb external drive that came with "Seagate Dashboard" software to manage back-ups. What I would like to do is create 2 500Gb partitions and use my Acronis software to make mirror images of both my desktop and laptop. Is this do-able? Would it be advisable to delete the "Seagate Dashboard"?
I have two USB 3.0 ports on the front of my Dell XPS 8500 Dell desktop. Once again I have caused the USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller to stop working because I did not disconnect the external hard drive before shutting down, it seems. It reminds me of leaving in a floppy drive but at least the computer would not boot in that circumstance. Now, there is no warning whatsoever. Dell technical support's answer is to refresh or reset the machine.
Any way that would be less time-consuming than having to reinstall all of my applications.
I have an external hard drive connected to my PC via hard drive dock on USB 3.0 port. Whenever I turn my PC on with the hard drive connected, my PC won't boot up because it is trying to boot up from the external hd where I have an image of both my Win 7 & Win 8 OS. How can I stop my PC from booting up from the external hd?
I have a 500 GB external USB drive that I can't access on my wife's Windows 8.1 laptop. I have confirmed that is in good operating condition on my XP PC where I can access all my files but in Computer Management on the Windows 8.1 laptop it displays as Disk 1 with a red arrow pointing down and it says Unknown and Not Initialized.
System Info Utility version 1.0.0.2 OS Version: Microsoft Windows 8.1, 64 bit Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4500U CPU @ 1.80GHz, Intel64 Family 6 Model 69 Stepping 1 Processor Count: 4 RAM: 7908 Mb Graphics Card: Intel(R) HD Graphics Family, -1984 Mb Hard Drives: C: Total - 940362 MB, Free - 902392 MB; Motherboard: Dell Inc., Inspiron 5537 Antivirus: McAfee Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware, Updated and Enabled
My wife just got a new PC running Windows 8.1 Pro and she wants to re-connect her external hard drive that has all her game files on it to the new PC.
While the new PC recognizes the drive it states that it needs to be initialized , doing so would wipe the data currently on the drive which would be unacceptable. How to get the new PC to recognize this drive and its data?
I have this problem were external hard drive do not show up on my PC.
First my I put my friends in and it did not work, then I went out and brought one myself (different brand) and it does not show up.
Windows automatically installed the drivers it said it even know what time of external it was. But now it doesn't appear in explorer. What should I do. It appears in the device manger list, but how do I access it?
I notice that when my computer is in sleep mode, I can unplug the external hard drive and the computer will power on again. I never had this issue with Windows 7. Right now I have Windows 8 Pro 64-bit.
Is there any way for me to disable this feature so that I can unplug the external hard drive without turning the computer back on again?
My old Sony Vaio broke the other day, so I've just got a new laptop. The Vaio was Vista, but now I'm on Windows 8.
I'd been backing up my Vaio to an external harddrive, but all I ever did was run the backup and let it get on with it. So for example, within the external harddrive now it just has a list of the dates I ran a backup, followed by 'Backup files 1', 'Backup files 2' etc. I'm hoping these include some of the documents/files I had on there, but I can't be sure. What exactly will have been backed up here?
I've been trying now to restore these files on my new laptop, but I can't seem to find a way. Is it possible?