Drive Letters

[WKing87]

Does anyone know of a way to swap hard drive letter assignments? I have two physical drives, one partitioned into two logical drives, the other is a single logical drive. I would like to have the partitioned drives as C: and D:, and the single as E: because of a large quantity of existing references to files on the E drive. Of course, Win98 defines the partitioned drives as C: and E:, and the single as D:. It would save me days of work if I could change the drive letters, but that is normally reserved for floppy and CD drives in the Device Manager. Any ideas?

Thanks,

Warren

[Leif]

Check this thread from Experts-Exchange

I believe TweakUI will do the job - anyone else know for sure?

[bigaldoc]

Boy, I don't think it'll work, Leif. I checked the TweakUI (1.33) on my Win98SE machine and I don't see any place for monkeying around with the physical vs. logical arrangement of hard drives. Don't know if it means anything, but Win XP still uses the same system of assigning drive letters FIRST by physical drive and THEN additional letters are assigned to logical drives (partitions). I also looked in TweakUI version 2 for XP and don't see anything. But I'm an ol' buzzard and my eyes ain't as good as they usedta be, so someone else ought to look too. (I admit I haven't checked Disk Manager to see how much lattitude it allows, since the question pertains to Win98)

[Granville]

I'm sure this won"t work for your primery partition and I don't have access to a "play" machine at this time. I do know that you can re-asign drive letters under Control Panel - System - Device Manager - select the drive - Settings. I can change the CD drive letter here but with only a single HDD cannot change "C:".

[KenK]

Hi Warren

You can download the software and instructions to swap any drive letters, including virtual and "A" drive, with the exception of "C" drive at this web page.
I haven't tried it as it seems to me it could cause too many headaches if it went wrong. The "manual" included in the download gives some basic examples and warnings.

Have a Great day!!!
Ken

[DocWatson]

Here's a neat little freeware utility that allows drive letter management in Windows 95/98/ME machines. It's called LetterAssigner, and "allows you to assign any letter to any drive in Windows 95/98 and MS-DOS (with a few insignificant exceptions). It remembers drives by their serial numbers or by the labels, which provides protection against letter changes that follow repartitioning or the connection of new drives. It also prevents non-bootable situations that may occur when the Windows directory is located on a drive other than C. The interface offers simple methods to choose letters, to move them from one drive to another, and to view the free letter set. Letter Assigner also allows you to view and change device properties for each drive easily.
The drive letters that are already assigned are grayed out, and free letters are in yellow at the top of the screen. However, you can go ahead and change any drive to any letter by simply dragging a letter from the letter bar and "dropping" it on a desired drive, dragging a desired letter from one drive and dropping it on another, or several other methods. You can even clear all drive letter assignments at once and start with a blank slate. Unfortunately, you will have to restart your computer if you make any changes, since the drive letter assignments are invoked only at boot-up.
This handy little free program is great, thanks to the program's author Vadim Burtyansky!

[bigaldoc]

If you get a chance to try either of the products suggested by Ken and Doc, would you post back Warren so other Loungers will know how you made out?

[WKing87]

Sorry for the delay, I've been swamped. I downloaded Doc's LetterAssigner, workd perfectly, thanks 1M.

Warren