Changing Drive Letters

[new]

Is it normal when installing Windows 7 that it installs itself on 'C' Drive and moves XP from 'C' Drive to 'D' Drive even though it appeared to be installing on 'D' during installation?

 

[johngalt]

AFAICT, Yes. This makes it easier for compatibility reasons. When you boot into XP you should see i being the C: drive again.

 

[new]

Thanks johngalt, I thought something was wrong, but from what you say it is normal.

 

[SIW2]

Hi new,

It doesn't actually move anything, it just assigns itself the C drive letter , and assigns another letter to the other o/s you have installed already.

XP is still physically where it was.

As Johngalt said, you will see this new drive letter assignment when you are in Win 7, but when you boot into XP, you will see XP listed as C again.

Hope it helps

 

[new]

Thanks again to you both, it really had me confused!!

 

[dnorris]

I have Vista 32 on C:, with additional drives D: and E:

I split D into 3 partitions and installed Win 7 on L: and it boots up on L:, and the original C:, D: and E: stay the same.

But when I installed Win 7 64 on M: (triple boot), it boots up as C: and my original C: became D: and it doesn't show my original D..
Seems like 64 bit works differently.

 

[jimbo45]

Hi all

Build 7077 (X-64) shows the Windows XP partition as a "Normal" disk volume on a Drive Letter (other than C) in Windows Explorer. You can access files on it as well.

Recent Previous builds (7048, 7057,7068) "Hid" the XP partition in Windows explorer (although you could see it as an "Unlettered" drive via Control panel==>administrative tools==>computer management==>Disk management . You couldn't access files on it via Windows explorer as it was a "hidden" partition.

I'm not sure which method I prefer .

XP will "See" the Windows 7 partion(s) as normal drive letters (other than C) in its version of Windows explorer.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[SIW2]

Hi dnorris,

When you say drives, you mean 3 separate HD's?

Did you then install 7x86 from the boot disc on one of the partitions on your second HD ?

If you install from a virtual drive, it will not take any of the letters already assigned to partitions, obviously.

 

[dnorris]

Hi dnorris,

When you say drives, you mean 3 separate HD's?

Did you then install 7x86 from the boot disc on one of the partitions on your second HD ?

If you install from a virtual drive, it will not take any of the letters already assigned to partitions, obviously.

C , D and E are separate hard disks (C is actually a 2 disk RAID0, E is external USB)
C has Vista x86

I partitioned the D drive in to 3 parts (D , L, M)
Installed 7000x86 on L from a boot DVD, it didn't take C, but kept L.
But when I installed 7x64 on M from a boot DVD, it took C, and reassigned the others.

 

[johngalt]

It could be because you had Vista so the first install of Win7 did not make any alterations - but the *second* install you had the Win7 boot files, so it made any and all changes it felt was appropriate....