Can someone tell me if I can change drive letter like this

[eaglepi]

Hello,
I just had to do a fresh install of my win7 ultimate and as always windows changes the drive letters. without going into a lot of stuff you don't want to know my problem is.

I have a redundant backup system on my drives for example I had drive L: F Drive and that had a copy of my F drive and I had a O:f Drive with a second copy. OK I'm anal..lol

Now that my drives are all different letters on this new install of windows I have a problem.

Can I do this, I know I can change the letter to whatever I want but if I change F drive to S will F be available to me to use. My F drive is now E and want to change all the letters to letters that I didn't have and then change them again to the letters I did have to keep my backup correct. I am wondering if I change a letter is the old letter available to me to use again.

Thanks hope this isn't so confusing

 

[jumanji]

Yes, the old letter that is released will be available to be assigned to another drive.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

The post is a bit confusing, but in my experience you can change drive letters at will from D on through Z, as long as you don't attempt to use a letter that is already in use.

If D is changed to R, then F can be renamed D.

Etcetera.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

As already stated, the old letter will become available again. However, I question how you are doing things.

First, if you had the C: and System Reserved partitions, with just the OS and programs in it, on their own drive, all you would have to do to avoid the drive letter changes would be to disconnect the other drives while doing the install. If you want to get a serious performance increase, put the C: and System Reserve partitions on a SSD.

Second, although having multiple backups is a very good idea (you aren't the only one who is anal here; I have four backup drives for each drive in use), keeping them inside your computer is not a good idea. While they will help protect against drive failure, if a virus or other malware should get into your machine, all your data, including the backups, could be corrupted or destroyed or the PSU could short out and fry your drives. It would be much safer to keep your backup drives outside the machine and connect them, using a dock or by keeping them in individual enclosures, only while updating the backup.

 

[eaglepi]

Great, I wanted to make sure that once I changed a letter it would still be available to use for a drive that was F but now E I can now change E to F and still use F again.

Thanks sorry for being confusing

 

[eaglepi]

As already stated, the old letter will become available again. However, I question how you are doing things.

First, if you had the C: and System Reserved partitions, with just the OS and programs in it, on their own drive, all you would have to do to avoid the drive letter changes would be to disconnect the other drives while doing the install. If you want to get a serious performance increase, put the C: and System Reserve partitions on a SSD.

Second, although having multiple backups is a very good idea (you aren't the only one who is anal here; I have four backup drives for each drive in use), keeping them inside your computer is not a good idea. While they will help protect against drive failure, if a virus or other malware should get into your machine, all your data, including the backups, could be corrupted or destroyed or the PSU could short out and fry your drives. It would be much safer to keep your backup drives outside the machine and connect them, using a dock or by keeping them in individual enclosures, only while updating the backup.

Yes I thought just like you for a long time. Then I had a external drive fry and it caused all kins of issues. I guess if it is time for a system to blow up....lol it will happen. My next build will be with SSD but so far knock on wood my backup system has worked good and never needed the extra backups. But I had them... I even had a PSU blow and my drives made it through it.. Fingers crossed

This system has been going great for 6 years now. Thanks for your reply

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

As already stated, the old letter will become available again. However, I question how you are doing things.

First, if you had the C: and System Reserved partitions, with just the OS and programs in it, on their own drive, all you would have to do to avoid the drive letter changes would be to disconnect the other drives while doing the install. If you want to get a serious performance increase, put the C: and System Reserve partitions on a SSD.

Second, although having multiple backups is a very good idea (you aren't the only one who is anal here; I have four backup drives for each drive in use), keeping them inside your computer is not a good idea. While they will help protect against drive failure, if a virus or other malware should get into your machine, all your data, including the backups, could be corrupted or destroyed or the PSU could short out and fry your drives. It would be much safer to keep your backup drives outside the machine and connect them, using a dock or by keeping them in individual enclosures, only while updating the backup.

Yes I thought just like you for a long time. Then I had a external drive fry and it caused all kins of issues. I guess if it is time for a system to blow up....lol it will happen. My next build will be with SSD but so far knock on wood my backup system has worked good and never needed the extra backups. But I had them... I even had a PSU blow and my drives made it through it.. Fingers crossed

This system has been going great for 6 years now. Thanks for your reply

That drive could fried internally as well. I've been using internal type HDD externally for years without a problem. I have a 3.5" hotswap bay built into my computer case that I plug my backup drives into when updating them. You could always use your existing backup drives in an external dock.

 

[AddRAM]

The only time you can`t change the letter is after you install a program to it from C. (which you shouldn`t do anyway) but as long as it`s just a data drive or partition you can change it.

I always change my optical drive letter to X Y or Z and if the pc has any built in flash card drive bays, I change those too.

 

[Layback Bear]

You could also rename your drives.
Example:
Drive E is your old videos. Just keep the E and change the name to Old Videos.

That way when you hook up drive E to any computer you will know what it is no matter what drive letter the system gives it.

This comes in handy when you use a Hot Swap for externals. Some times the drive letters will change but the name will stay the same.

 

[eaglepi]

I was able to change the letters on all but one drive. I just installed windows7 again today and don't have my ftp software installed yet so I can show you what happened but I will see if I can explain it .

I followed the tutorial to change letters on this forum, I changed the letters as follows:
D TO P
E TO Q
L TO R
F TO S
N TOT
O TO U
G TO V
H TO W
M TO X

Then I changed the letters again to,
F
D
G
E
H
L
M on M i had a problem it wasn't available
N
O
Then I rebooted and when my system came up the P was now a "I"

I read the option # to change in the reg. when I went to regedit I saw that M was still listed and there was 1 or 2 more that I didn't use but they were still there. since I done want to mess with the registry on things I didn't understand and what I saw I didn't understand. So I can deal with using "I" instead of "M"

If anyone is interested I will post with pictures when I setup my ftp.

 

[AddRAM]

All can be done in Disk Management, don`t touch the registry.

 

[eaglepi]

All can be done in Disk Management, don`t touch the registry.

ALL can't be done when a letter isn't availible, if you know how to make the "M" appear back in the dropdown where you pick the letter you want, by all means share

 

[AddRAM]

Then something is grabbing M, could you post a shot of DM ?

 

[eaglepi]

Then something is grabbing M, could you post a shot of DM ?

Yes, as I said in a earlier reply in this thread I will as soon as I install my ftp software and configure it. I just did a fresh clean install of win7..

 

[Brink]

Hello Ron,

In addition, this may be able to help change the drive letters until you get your screenshots posted.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/82994-drive-letter-add-change-remove-windows.html

 

[eaglepi]

Hello Ron,

In addition, this may be able to help change the drive letters until you get your screenshots posted.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/82994-drive-letter-add-change-remove-windows.html

Thanks, Yes that is the tutorial I mentioned that I followed to make the changes. I appreciate everyone's replies but it might be best to not talk about this until I post my images. That way nobody will be wasting their time trying to help me. Once you all can see the screen shots I took to help me explain I think you will all have better facts to base your help tips.

Thanks

 

[eaglepi]

OK I got mt FTP installed so now I can show you images of what I tried to tell you about over the last few days.

This was how my drives were before I reinstalled win7 the other day

Here is what it looked after I changed all the letters, the only difference that you won't see in the below image is I changed the drive letter that that contained my original F drive to P then I was going to rename it F. After a reboot that letter P was now "I" see below.

Then I continued reading the tutorial about changing letters for drives on this forum and there was a option #3 doing it in regedit. I know how to edit my reg but some things are over my head and I am smart enough to not mess with my reg if I don't understand what I am doing. But I did notice that in my reg there were more letters than drive I have and some letters I changed to free that letter up is still in the reg. I have 5 hard drives partitioned each drive into 2 so I have 10 drive letters, as you can see in the reg pic below there are see below there are 12. That is why "M" is no longer available.

I read that you can add letters but when I tried the option to add a letter was grayed out and I would ahve had to mount and I don't know anything about that and once again I don't do thing I don't understand.

I hope this helps explain everything I had posted prior to this post. If all I have to do is use "I" instead of "M" which isn't available I can live with that. I am lucky that my "M" drive didn't include anything too major that have it drive "I" now would casue any major problems.

OK done, once again I appreciate your help and I hope this is a bit more clear now.

 

[Layback Bear]

I think it would be more helpful if you used this tutorial by Golden to post screen shots of Disk Management.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/274797-disk-management-post-screen-capture-image.html

This will allow the helping members to better understand this disk management thing you have.

 

[Brink]

In addition, you can upload and attach your images directly here instead of using an image hosting site.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/9733-screenshots-files-upload-post-seven-forums.html

 

[eaglepi]

I think it would be more helpful if you used this tutorial by Golden to post screen shots of Disk Management.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/274797-disk-management-post-screen-capture-image.html

This will allow the helping members to better understand this disk management thing you have.

I have had a week of hell starting with my antivirus stop working. I worked with tech support for a week, I finally had to by my choice install Win7 fresh after several years of never having a problem.

I am stressed big time so forgive me if I don't care what you think about how I posted my hard drive images. I did the best I could without spending hours reading the forum to find out the best way. I am sure it is but I did it the best I could. SORRY I TROUBLED YOU