I have a system with two partitions on the hard drive. One for boot and one for storage. It has given the large storage partition the letter C and the boot partition the letter D. I have tried to rename the storage partition to S using the MMC for disk management, but it says it can't remove the letter from a boot partition. I booted to UBCD4win and moved all the files from C into one folder. This caused me to have to reinstall windows as it had some of the boot files on it even though Windows was installed on the other partition. Even after this it put the system files on C and the OS on D.

Can I boot to UBCD4Win and use some utility to re-letter the C partition to S, and then drive D to C?

Thanks,

Doug Traylor

The problem with trying to change the letter of the boot partition is the registry. Once you force a change it gets all confused about where stuff should be and generally will require a reinstall. So the short answer is no. It's better to just reinstall the OS the way you want it (ie...create only the boot partition first and then the second one after you've installed windows)

Cheers

Wow, you are getting yourself into quite a mess here buddy! I have honestly never tried to do that so I really don't know how to advise you on this one. Hopefully a member of the forum has some advice for you.

Although! The new version may be able to help you a little more. I am currently finishing up my testing and should start uploading the new version to the mirrors soon. The new version should be available for download in about 4 hours from now. The new version includes MMC, which would be very helpful for you in this situation!!

I don't mind a reinstall. The system was hosed to begin with. I have reinstalled twice already It's just that there is a lot of stuff on the 99GB storage partition and I want the 20GB system(boot) partition to be drive C.

Thanks,

Doug Traylor

I don't mind having the ntldr and other boot files on the storage drive if only I could get it to be something other than C without having to wipe the whole system and lose the data that I unfortunately don't have another drive large enough to backup to.

Doug

My 2 pennies:

Just a suggestion, but you might check out the eldergeek. Lots of great XP info here.

http://theeldergeek.com/hard_drives.htm
http://theeldergeek.com/hard_drives_04.htm


(I would suggest performing major system adjustments within your native OS.) The latest UBCD4Win with the MMC snapin may address this problem.

Wellll...since you want to start fresh and keep the stuff on the other partition... Here's what you can do:

1. Download the new version of UBCD4WIN when Steel uploads it.
2. Create it and then boot up your system with it.
3. Open Disk Management
4. Highlight the partition you want to be the boot partition, then right click and select "Mark Partition as Active"
5. You can then try to change the drive letters.

Now, if that doesn't work, there is something else you can try.

1. After booting up into UBCD4WIN, open a command window
2. Type mountvol and hit enter
3. You should be able to use mountvol to unmount your other drive 99GB (C:)
4. Now try to use Disk Management to change the drive letter.
5. If that still doesn't work, we then go on to the third option ...the comand line!

1. Open a command window and run diskpart.exe
2. Run the following commands in order ('list partition' will tell you the partition number of your 20gb partition, replace whatever I put down for 'select partition' with the correct value):

3. Now once you exit diskpart, run (from the command line):

4. If you have a second drive you can start your Windows installation from inside of the UBCD4WIN environment or you can reboot the machine and install Windows normally.

99Gig is a lot of stuff! You should really think about a way to backup all of that data. If that hard drive is ever totally hosed you will be very sorry.

With so much data I couldn't even suggest my normal backup methods, burning to CD or transferring the files through a network while booted into the project. Does anyone know off hand, does deepburner allow you to burn DVD's?? I can't remember and I'm pretty busy at the moment. Maybe I need to start working on the CD Burner XP Pro plugin again and see if I can add DVD burning capabilities to the project.

My brain is pretty fried from testing the new version tonight so I can't even think of a way to get windows to do what you are asking. There has got to be some type of solution for this. Sorry I can't be more helpful....I'm gonna finish testing the new version so I can hopefully upload it soon!!

I know I saw a way of changing drive letters by use of editing the registry, but I can't remember. Here's what I found at M$ though...

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...kb;en-us;307844

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...kb;en-us;124298

:-)

Thanks for all the ideas ya'll. I was looking for something like the new version of UBCD45Win with the MMC support, but the diskpart path might work too. The system is over at the owner's and he is trying to get everything of value off the 99gig drive just in case it don't work!

Doug

Buy a USB 3.5 hdd case they aren't that expensive and large IDE hdd to go into it. It's a very cheap and easy solution, I have several USB hdd's at home with all the data I need backed up on them.