Drive letter assignment

[NoctisReitop]

I'm having trouble with windows and my drive letter assignments. I have a drive that's 30 gigs that I want to be my primary c drive. Every time I go to windows setup, it tries to tell me that the drive is e (the last drive). I've plugged the drive in to the first and last sata port on the mobo, but it still does the same thing. Do jumpers help with sata drives too? I've figured, since the mobo says every sata is a master that it doesn't matter. Anyway, this is just annoying... I recently just reformatted my lone 30 gig drive (which was previously c:), and somehow it changed my other two drives (previously d: and e:) to c: and d: respectively, throwing the 30 gig to e:... why is my computer tormenting me again? Probably something simple, but regardless =\. One of the three drives, I cannot format, for it contains all of my stuff I want to keep.

[Hitman]

Windows automatically assigns the drive or partition that you install windows onto as the C: drive. If another C: Drive exists it will assign it the next available drive letter. One of your other drives is causing this problem. You can try changing the drive letters to all the other drives so that none of them are C:, then reinstall windows and it should default to C:. If you want to be extra cautious unplug all the HDD except the one you're installing windows onto. Once Windows is installed plug the other drives in and windows will pick them up and assign them drive letters automatically.

Is there by chance another OS installed on one of the other drives?

[NoctisReitop]

Nope. How does XP choose the first drive? I'd like XP to look at my 30gb first. Do sata drives abide by the same jumper rules as pata / ide?

[Hitman]

No you assign priority in the bios.

[NoctisReitop]

Well the 30 gig occupies the first sata spot. The other two drives are at 4 and 6...

[Hitman]

Originally Posted by NoctisReitop

Well the 30 gig occupies the first sata spot. The other two drives are at 4 and 6...

Doesn't really matter, you have to set priority in the bios.

[NoctisReitop]

Hmmm. I'll have to check up on that. I took for granted priority was simply the spot it occupied.

[NoctisReitop]

Ah, I found what you mentioned. Thanks a lot. It was indeed set up so that my 30 gig was last. This fixes everything. Wonderful! ^^.

[Hitman]

Originally Posted by NoctisReitop

Hmmm. I'll have to check up on that. I took for granted priority was simply the spot it occupied.

It's actually totally irrelevant. Windows should assign C to the system partition. The only reason it wouldn't is because it's already assigned. You can't change your Letter assignment on a system partition. The only way you can do it is to reformat.

[NoctisReitop]

No. When I go to reinstall windows on the 30 gig, it reassigned all of my old drive letters that I hadn't touched. My storage drive was assigned c: and my 30 gig, which got the OS, was assigned e:. Freakin' wierd to me. But it's fixed now. =)