Second hard drive in Windows XP - CDROM-Guide forums

catlitter · #1 Jun 21, 2002, 08:44 AM

On my old PC I had a primary hard drive and a secondary hard drive. Drive C was primary, drive D was secondary. I also had a CDRW as drive E and DVD as drive F.

A shop built me a new PC and set the primary driive as C, CDRW as D, DVD as E and second hard drive now as F.

Why is the new hard drive F and not D?
What happens to second hard drive if I format my C drive and reinstall XP?
Will the second drive be there? Will it be set as D or still as F?

Please help!

Thanks

KremmenUK · #2 Jun 21, 2002, 09:13 AM

WinXP does not reorder the drive letters automatically as per previous versions of Windows.

However it is easy to reorder the letters manually to achieve what you are after.

Unfortunately I don't have XP in the office to be precise.

Hopefully someone has the exact location of the utility.

I had a C:\ and D:\ with my DVD as E:\ and Burner as F:\

I moved the DVD to Y:\ and the Burner to Z:\ then I moved my 2nd HDD partition 1 to E:\ , Partition 2 to F:\ and finally the DVD to G:\ and the Burner to H:\

No need to re-format - just find the utility.

catlitter · #3 Jun 21, 2002, 09:22 AM

Thanks
What I mean though is will the hard drive be in Windows if I format the C drive? I don't want to have to use a utility to find it. I don't care what letter it is. There is a partition on it.

KremmenUK · #4 Jun 21, 2002, 09:50 AM

Yes - the 2nd HDD has already been identified in the BIOS.

Also the Partitions are set.

If you have WinXP already on your C:\ then personally I wouldn't format and re-install.

Problems ?

sparkster · #5 Jun 21, 2002, 12:20 PM

Like KremmenUK said no need to format your drive.
When you reinstall WinXP either as a repair or a fresh install then your secondary harddrive will still be present and all files intact.

Richskie · #6 Jun 21, 2002, 02:40 PM

Windows NT/2K/XP write a id to the drive that tells Windows it is C: / D: or whatever. If you reinstall XP the second harddrive should still be F:
However by using the disk management console (Start/run [B]diskmgmt.msc[/B]) you can change the drive letters to what you want.
The exception to this is your boot drive (ie C: ) & any drives that have pagefiles on them (though you can just remove them while you rename the drive)

DOS (ie Win9x) used to call the first primary partition c: & then allocate any primary partitions on a 2nd or 3rd drive.
Then the secondary partitions on the 1st drive followed by the 2nd & 3rd.
Then any removable devices such as cd-roms (hope that makes sense).