Windows 7: adding a letter to a drive

Hi,
I have a dell precision 490 dual core set up. It has twin 130g drives, and I added the 160g drive from my old xp machine. It is in slot 2 for sata drives. I went to F2 and turned on the power to it and then when I go to computer management the drive is there and partitioned into 3 segments. The first is only about 30 meg, the second i am sure has the window xp and all my folders are at, the third is a 3.5g section. The 3.5 g segment is formatable and i can assign it a letter but it wont let me assign a letter to either of the first two sections. The menu showes up but all that is highlighted in blck is delete volume and I can't do that else I will lose all the pictures music ect. Other than taking apart my tera drive and dropping this xp drive into it ( to try to gain access via usb port) into it how can I assign a drive letter to the segment so i can access my folders. After that is done I would have no problem formating the drive to make it one partition.

Drive Letter - Add, Change, or Remove in Windows 7

We have some very good tutorials here, made by some very knowledgeable people. Hope this helps!

Welcome to the forums btw.

Thanks for the welcome and suggestions as well. I thought maybe the comand prompt tutorial would help but it only sees what has an assigned letter. I have looked through the other threads as well and still nothing. Any other suggestions?

Command prompt will see all drives connected to your machine whether they have a drive letter or not. click start, all programs, accessories, right click command prompt and select 'run as administrator'. Type each command and press enter and wait for the cmd prompt to respond.
diskpart
list disk
select disk 1 (or whatever number is assigned to the disk)
list partition
select partition 2 (or the partition number you want to assign a letter to)
assign
exit (to exit diskpart)
exit (To exit command prompt)

It did see all three drives but it wouldn't let me assign a letter to partition 2 which is the main one that has my folders in it. I did change the third partition from g to h but you can do that in the management section too. I even tried to just assign a letter to the disk itself but i got the same error message. Any other suggestions? I am just about ready to open my seagate 2 t drive and pull the drive out and insert the xp drive into it and plug it in as a usb to see if I can access the folders that way.

any other suggestions anyone?

Download and burn to dvd Ubuntu v.12.10

Pop it into your optical, and boot up with it. Make sure your dvd drive is first in your boot order in BIOS. Alternatively, hit the hot key (whatever POST shows you) for a boot menu.

DO NOT INSTALL IT. Just run. See what the Linux shows you on that drive you want to extract data from.

Yes mate use the TRY with Ubuntu and if that doesn't work try Best Free Partition Manager Freeware and free partition magic for Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista and Windows XP 32 bit & 64 bit. MiniTool Free Partition Manager Software Home Edition.

pscowboy - not sure what you are asking me to do, I did change the drives position and the bios did not like the fact that an XP drive was the lead bood drive. I got the blue screen of death even in safe mode. I know the bios for 7 and xp are different. I also pulled apart my 2 t drive and dropped in my xp drive into it and attached it to my older 7 machine. It sees it, gave it a drive letter, but wants to format the drive as the folder system is not recognized. Any way I can get around the format?? There are too many programs save folders and pictures that i need to get off this drive.

No mate what cowboy is saying is - I think - boot the machine to the "TRY" Ubuntu OS then you can open the other drives once inside the Ubuntu - it will list all drives that are attached and can be dug down into for file retrieval.

It is just like opening the drives using Computer in windows and right clicking on the drive - open then dig down to find the programs and then the files in them.

I Cit-- ok i think i understand what you are saying, now to get to the "try" ubuntu os -- never seen that. how do i get there?