Windows 7: Problem with renaming a remote hard drive

I just bought a nice new computer running Windows 7 (upgrade from XP) and carefully prepared for the transfer with the help of my remote hard disk, my I: drive. Among other things, that drive has all my music. I use winamp and I also copied all the playlists, which reference the I drive, on to that drive.

Because the names of remote disks can get changed by accident when you are adding and removing hardware, I knew how to rename a drive. When I hooked the remote drive up to my new computer it was named J. I pulled up the instructions for renaming it, which involve doing to drive management and pulling up a menu of new names. The trouble is that I isn't on the menu.



I believe that if I can't figure out a way to name the drive I again I am going to have to redo every single playlist--one for each of about 100 symphonies, etc. HELP! Thanks in advance.

KaiserD2

Do you want to change the drive name or edit the drive letter? If as you say you want your external hard drive to be drive "I" and it is showing Drive "J" then I think you might have a card reader on your new machine. It is always better when you want to give an ext drive a dedicated letter to choose one at the top end of the alphabet like "X" "Y" or "Z". Then they don't get automatically altered when you put new hardware into you PC like card readers etc.
BTW A warm welcome to the Seven Forum

Thanks, but I don't think you understood what the problem is. Unless I can find a way to name it I:, I'm going to have to redo hundreds of playlists.

KaiserD2

Then you need to free up some drive letters so I becomes available again...
Remove any USB thumb drives and/or your card reader...

A screenshot of Disk Management would be helpful.

Open Disk Manager and look at all your drive letter assignments. If you see that I: is used then that is why you cannot assign your Music Drive that letter. You will need to move other drives around to free up the I: drive letter.

If you have a multi card reader or some other device that is taking up a bunch of driver letters that CANNOT be moved then you may have to edit the play lists. If I remember correctly (however I have not used WinAmp in many years) the play list are just text files. You could use a software like “Search and Replace” to search and replace I: with J: in all the play list files.

Search and Replace for Windows - Funduc Software

Yes I did understand the problem. I still strongly recommend that you give your ext hard drive a dedicated letter further up the alphabet. Yes it will mean changing all the links in the playlist files to the new letter and this can be easily done using a Find and replace utility. All you would need to do is find every instance of I:\ and replace with X:\. This sounds daunting but the software will do this automatically and very speedily. The big advantage to using a top end dedicated letter is that you will get no problems if you ever add more external storage media or wish to connect your Ext HD to another computer. All you need do if you connect to another computer is use disk management to recognise the drive letter.
There's loads of free search and replace software here:
Free Text Search and Replace Utilities (thefreecountry.com)

I haven't made the situation clear.

Here are the instructions I've been following (the procedure is marginally different for Windows 7 but it's easy to work it out.)

Right click on My Computer, select Manage, then under the Storage option
select Disk Management.
Now in the right hand pane right click on the Drive or Partition that you
want to
change and select Change Drive Letter and Paths.
Then click the Change button and pick a letter from the pull down list.


The problem is that I is not on the pull down list, and there is no option to enter a letter of your own. I is NOT in use. But there's no way to PUT it in use that I can see.

Now the hard disk on this new machine is so huge that I could very easily create a partition, if I could name it I:, and put all the music on it--do you know if that's possible?

KaiserD2

It may not show as in use in the top area marked "A" in my screenshot but it should show "I" drive in the lower area marked "B". If it is then right click on the name Disk 4 or whatever number is there and click "Change drive letter". Here choose a letter beyond those in use say "M". Then highlight your ext HD and do the same but choose "I" that will now be showing in the drop down list.
You didn't say if you have a card reader installed in your PC. This is quite important to this situation.

Well, it turned out the joke was on me. There was no drive labelled I:;, but I finally figured out that if you kept scrolling down the list, I had been reserved for a non-existent removable drive. So I changed it to K and then changed J to I and, presto. Thanks for your help. I'll check those search and replaces, but I 've never seen playlists open to actual file locations.

Glad you got it worked out.

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