Windows xp drive assignments

With NT operating systems the hard drive partition drive letters are maintained by linking them to a partition by using a unique number that is assigned to each partition and stored in the Windows registry.

On a classic MBR styled hard drive this unique partition number is generated from the disk signature of the drive and the sector number that a partition starts on, It's different on GPT drives - see box below. During Windows bootup the stored partition number is compared with the disk signature and if they match then the partition will retain the drive letter that was previously assigned to it. If a disk signature is changed the partition numbers in the registry become invalid.

They no longer match the disk signature of a drive and therefore drive letter assignments are lost. On first reboot after a signature change each partition on the affected drive will have its unique number updated to match the new disk signature, then be reassigned a drive letter.

These reassigned letters may not match the originals and so drive letters may change. The highlighted number is that of the C: drive and we can tell from its first 8 digits that the disk signature of the hard drive is e8 b4 12 f4. The E: drive is showing the same disk signature in its partition number so this tells us that E: is a separate partition on the same hard drive that the C: partition is on. The F: drive also has a 24 digit unique partition number, but the disk signature here is 68 5a 12 8d , which tells us that this machine must have at least two hard drives.

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Thank You. See our full Terms of Use. Material on this site is not guaranteed to be free of errors. Exploring and explaining multibooting techniques and issues. About Contribute Disclaimer Contact News. Multiboot What's that all about? Multibooting With Windows Latest. Advice and Warnings and Things to Know. These are the two partitions of my one hard drive. F : Removable Disk.

Neither Drive E: nor Drive C: is listed as an option. What I get is a Windows message to insert a disk into Drive A:. I did not notice any of this before because I have never tried to backup to a disk before.

Questions : 1: How do I get the Wizard to recognize my E: drive? As you can see from your experience, XP's native backup program N TBackup is one of the worst possible options for backing up. I can recommend a far superior alternative. But first, you need to let us know what your goal is:.

Make incremental perfect bootable copies of your system, including all service packs, updates, installed programs, etc. Your initial post was not confusing whatsoever.

It was clear, concise, and easy to understand. In reply to Daavee's post on July 25, In reply to It did what? I would be glad to hear about your solution Gladly. But first you need to let me know which one of the following is your goal:.

I won't go into much detail now, but if your goal is number one, you can use ntbackup or this program and choose an external hard drive as your destination. If your goal is number two, you may use any number of imagining programs along with, yes, an external hard drive.

Here is one I like:. Note: Correction. Be advised, that in many cases it may render your system unbootable. However if you absolutely must change it in order for your system to function correctly, you can visit the Microsoft support article Article ID: Please do this at your own risk.

Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0. This method will not work if you wish to change your main drive letter. Windows XP S2 will not let you. You Might Also Like How to. How to. About This Article. Tested by:. Co-authors: Updated: April 8, Categories: XP Instructions. Thanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read , times.

Reader Success Stories Beth I. Mar 19, A program needed file paths specified, so I had to keep redefining them for every swap. A real pain. I changed the drive letter on the laptop to match the one on the desktop. Problem solved! Thank you! Rated this article:.

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