Win7 relabels partitions

[Roberta]

Had to reinstall dual boot with XP and Win7.
Originally, Win7 was installed on N.
So that when booted into XP or Win7 I saw C: XP and N: Win7
Now I'm getting in XP C: XP N: Win7
but in Win7 C: Win7 (which is correct) and D:XP. As a result all my other partitions have been moved to the next letter.
When I reinstalled, the partition Win7 went in was unallocated at time of install. I do not remember if it had been formatted before the original install. Would that make a difference?
Basically, when in Win7, can I change XP's drive from C to N? Without goofing up anything?
Thank you, Roberta

 

[severedsolo]

Hi Roberta welcome to the Forums

The great thing (from the point of view of your question) about Windows drive letters is that they are completely cosmetic. You can change letters however you want in one OS, and they will be completely unaffected by the other.

The short answer to your question is yes, WIndows 7 has just given XP's drive D because it was the next available letter, (Windows is always C). XP will be completely unaffected by the change.

Im just going to throw a suggestion out there though. It might be worth removing XP's drive letter altogether from Windows 7. For that matter, it's worth removing 7's drive letter from XP too. I have had a few OS's go a bit... funny if you have another OS write to their system drive. If you have files on XP you want to access from 7, and vice versa then why not create a "data drive" or partition for both OS's to get files from without having to write to system drives? Also a hell of a lot easier if you need to reinstall too.

 

[theog]

Can you post a screen shot of Disk management?
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Screenshot tools.
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Use Snipping Tool to capture screen shots

 

[Roberta]

Thank you! That really simplifies my life.
I have a second hard drive with nothing but data files on it. XP and Win7 are on their own little HD and I originally had both OSes using the same data files. That's why having the partition labels changed in Win7 was a pain. Didn't want to have to remember which was which.
Off to change things to happiness.