How can I tell the computer that the installed hard drive E: should be C:?

June 1, 2004 2:07 PM

I have one hard drive installed in my computer, and it shows up as E: . There is no C:. How can I tell the computer that the installed hard drive E: should be C:?
posted by alball to computers & internet (13 comments total)

It can be changed through control panels, but I can't remember how off the top of my head..
posted by ascullion at 2:16 PM on June 1, 2004

Here's the info you need
posted by ascullion at 2:17 PM on June 1, 2004

Sometimes it can be beneficial for your system drive to not be C:. Security through obscurity, yo.
posted by neckro23 at 2:22 PM on June 1, 2004

That won't work. you can't re-assign the boot drive.

Go here.
posted by linux at 2:33 PM on June 1, 2004

By the way, don't even try to use MMC (Computer management) to re-assign the boot drive... you may make your system unbootable.
posted by linux at 2:37 PM on June 1, 2004

Whoops - sorry - didn't realise you only had one drive. Misread the question...
posted by ascullion at 3:00 PM on June 1, 2004

Make sure the jumpers on the drive are set to "master."
posted by bingo at 3:29 PM on June 1, 2004

If you've already installed Windows, and Windows is on E (which it must be) then don't try to change the drive letter. It will break it.

The motherboard's BIOS in conjunction with older operating system stuff, and SCSI bios (if applicable) will assign drive letters according to various things such as which IDE controller the physical drive is on, whether the partition(s) is primary or extended (primary partitions are enumerated first) and probably a variety of other factors that I can't recall.

However, any version of Windows after 2000 is NT based and has its own means of assigned drive letters for its purposes. It will assign letters, roughly, by default based upon the older criteria; but you can reassign (or unassign or even assign to a folder) the logical drive(s) it recognizes. But where the drive that Windows is installed upon is concerned, you don't want to change it because far too much stuff has that letter corresponding to the Win drive set at installation and changing it will break pretty much everything.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 4:56 PM on June 1, 2004

Why do you want it to be C:?

Everything should work fine regardless.
posted by smackfu at 5:33 PM on June 1, 2004

I'm sure you have a reason but I'm curious also. If there's a way I can avoid having to do this, I'd like to, so let us know how the situation came about, and why you need to change.
posted by scarabic at 6:14 PM on June 1, 2004

I have exactly the same situation with one of our PCs at home. It came about by partitioning the drive into three (one for system files, one for my data and one for everyone else's data), then installing XP onto one of them. Being new to XP, I did not then know how to set defaults for My Documents etc (one of those things that makes you feel stupid when you find out how easy it was) and got sick of the various people that used the PC complaining that they could never find their files. To solve the problem at the time, I amalgamated all three partitions back into one and let the user profiles manage where stuff got put, which meant that, for some reason, that single partition ended up being E:.

I would change the drive letter if I could, simply because it annoys me and is a (to me) glaring example of my ineptitude. Everyone knows that, if you only have one HDD, it is supposed to be C: goddamn it!
posted by dg at 12:18 AM on June 2, 2004

The link I posted is a Microsoft how-to. It won't break your system.
posted by linux at 9:49 AM on June 2, 2004

I use an external usb2 drive to move big files from home to work. when I plug the external drive into home computer, the computer recognizes it as C:. A lot of software I use installs itself on C: drive, which means the software is unusable when the external drive is not there.

I ended up reformating and reinstalling win xp. It now shows as C:
posted by alball at 11:40 AM on June 2, 2004