Please help me synch drive assignments on dual boot

O.K. I have a problem with drive letter assignments.



I?m building a new machine. An ASUS A8V, AMD 3500+, 200MB SATA as primary
(divided into two partitions), and a 300MB IDE as file storage



I first installed Win32. It went into the first partition of the SATA and
called itself C: as nice as can be. FWIW I had not formatted the second half
of that SATA drive. Anyhow the IDE drive showed up as G: Again all nice and
happy.

Then I installed my purchased copy of Win64 (not an upgrade). It loaded
well. Established a dual boot BOOT.INI and happily ran and registered itself
over my wireless NIC.



Both systems seem to happily co-exist.



However, the Win64 system installed itself as Drive G: and generally loused
up my drive assignments. (I think the data drive in Win64 is called D)



I expect to be running both systems for a while. I expect to use Win64 for
extensive film and photo editing and the older Win32 mostly because I have
some substantial driver problems with some of my commercial grade printers
and scanners.



It is kind of important that my data (picture) files have the same drive
letter assignment in both systems. I, of course, can?t merely change the
drive letter of the Win64 operating system. I haven?t loaded any of the
applications on either system yet (I had expected trouble) and I will
happily blow away either, or both.



I sure would appreciate some suggestions on how to rebuild this machine to
get Win32 on C: and Win64 on D:. I don?t much care what drive assignment I
put the data disk on.



Thanks for your help.

Thomas
Sat May 21 07:25:08 CDT 2005

Donald Wilkinson wrote:

> I sure would appreciate some suggestions on how to rebuild
> this machine to get Win32 on C: and Win64 on D:. I donâ??t much
> care what drive assignment I put the data disk on.

I had a similar problem when I installed Win64.

There is two SATA disks and one PATA disk in my computer.
SATA 1 is divided into two partitions and Win32 sees them as
follows both in setup and when Win32 is installed:

SATA 1 Partition 1: C

SATA 1 Partition 2: D

SATA 2: E

PATA: F

I installed Win32 on drive C but the Win64 setup saw them quite
different. Unfortunately I can't recall exactly how it saw them,
but it was something like this:

SATA 1 Partition 1: C

SATA 1 Partition 2: F

SATA 2: E

PATA: D

I ended up disconnecting the SATA 2 and PATA disk before installing
Win64 and by disconnecting I mean taking the power cable of both
disks so that Win64 setup could only see SATA 1 partition 1 and 2.
That allowed me to install Win64 on partition 2 which now had the
same driver letter as in Win32 (D).

When the Win64 installation was over, I plugged the SATA 2 and
PATA disks on again.

--
Regards
Madsen

Charlie
Sat May 21 12:24:14 CDT 2005

You can change the drive letter assignments of any of the drives EXCEPT the
OS drives without problems, especially since you haven't installed apps yet.
One thing that can help is to change the drive letter(s) assigned to CD/DVD
drives -- I like to put CD-ROM drives at "R:" (for ROM) on all my machines.
Gets it up out of the way. To change the assignment of your data drive,
decide what drive letter you want to use for data. Whatever is currently
assigned that drive letter, change it to something else, then assign the
drive letter to your data drive. Repeat on both x64 and x86 versions of
Windows.

To assign a drive letter, Select Start, Run and then type "diskmgmt.msc" in
the open field and hit enter to open the disk management MMC.
Right Click on partition you want to change, and select "Change Drive Letter
and Paths". Click Change and select the the new drive letter from the drop
down list. Click OK as required to complete the change and exit out of disk
management.

--
Charlie.

Donald Wilkinson wrote:
> O.K. I have a problem with drive letter assignments.
>
>
>
> I?m building a new machine. An ASUS A8V, AMD 3500+, 200MB SATA as
> primary (divided into two partitions), and a 300MB IDE as file storage
>
>
>
> I first installed Win32. It went into the first partition of the SATA
> and called itself C: as nice as can be. FWIW I had not formatted the
> second half of that SATA drive. Anyhow the IDE drive showed up as G:
> Again all nice and happy.
>
> Then I installed my purchased copy of Win64 (not an upgrade). It
> loaded well. Established a dual boot BOOT.INI and happily ran and
> registered itself over my wireless NIC.
>
>
>
> Both systems seem to happily co-exist.
>
>
>
> However, the Win64 system installed itself as Drive G: and generally
> loused up my drive assignments. (I think the data drive in Win64 is
> called D)
>
>
> I expect to be running both systems for a while. I expect to use
> Win64 for extensive film and photo editing and the older Win32 mostly
> because I have some substantial driver problems with some of my
> commercial grade printers and scanners.
>
>
>
> It is kind of important that my data (picture) files have the same
> drive letter assignment in both systems. I, of course, can?t merely
> change the drive letter of the Win64 operating system. I haven?t
> loaded any of the applications on either system yet (I had expected
> trouble) and I will happily blow away either, or both.
>
>
>
> I sure would appreciate some suggestions on how to rebuild this
> machine to get Win32 on C: and Win64 on D:. I don?t much care what
> drive assignment I put the data disk on.
>
>
>
> Thanks for your help.

andy
Sat May 21 14:48:59 CDT 2005

Drive letters are assigned during Setup.
1. Disconnect the 300GB IDE drive from the motherboard.
2. Boot from the XP 32 CD.
3. ON the screen that shows the disks and partitions thereon, delete
all partitions on the SATA disk.
4. Create the first partition for Windows XP. Drive letter C: should
be assigned to this partition, which is active primary.
5. Create another partition for Windows XP 64. Drive letter D: should
be assigned to this partition, which is a logical drive in an extended
partition.
6. If Drive letters C: and D: were not assigned correctly during 4.
and 5., abort setup using F3-F3, and reboot from the CD.
7. Otherwise, pick the first partition (C:) to install XP 32.
8. Boot from XP 64 CD, and install on the second partition (D:).

On Sat, 21 May 2005 07:25:55 -0400, "Donald Wilkinson" <donw@fyi.net>
wrote:

>O.K. I have a problem with drive letter assignments.
>
>
>
>I?m building a new machine. An ASUS A8V, AMD 3500+, 200MB SATA as primary
>(divided into two partitions), and a 300MB IDE as file storage
>
>
>
>I first installed Win32. It went into the first partition of the SATA and
>called itself C: as nice as can be. FWIW I had not formatted the second half
>of that SATA drive. Anyhow the IDE drive showed up as G: Again all nice and
>happy.
>
>Then I installed my purchased copy of Win64 (not an upgrade). It loaded
>well. Established a dual boot BOOT.INI and happily ran and registered itself
>over my wireless NIC.
>
>
>
>Both systems seem to happily co-exist.
>
>
>
>However, the Win64 system installed itself as Drive G: and generally loused
>up my drive assignments. (I think the data drive in Win64 is called D)
>
>
>
>I expect to be running both systems for a while. I expect to use Win64 for
>extensive film and photo editing and the older Win32 mostly because I have
>some substantial driver problems with some of my commercial grade printers
>and scanners.
>
>
>
>It is kind of important that my data (picture) files have the same drive
>letter assignment in both systems. I, of course, can?t merely change the
>drive letter of the Win64 operating system. I haven?t loaded any of the
>applications on either system yet (I had expected trouble) and I will
>happily blow away either, or both.
>
>
>
>I sure would appreciate some suggestions on how to rebuild this machine to
>get Win32 on C: and Win64 on D:. I don?t much care what drive assignment I
>put the data disk on.
>
>
>
>Thanks for your help.
>

Donald
Sun May 22 05:49:55 CDT 2005

I blew away the Win64 installation. I did disconnect the IDE drive and
formatted the extended partition on my SATA drive.
With only one partition to go into Win64 installed itself as the D: drive.
(apparently my problem stemmed for the fact that I had not created that
extended partition before I tried to install Win64 - it was just
"unallocated" space)

Anyhow its all fixed and ready to rumble. Thanks for the help

DonW


"Donald Wilkinson" <donw@fyi.net> wrote in message
news:OXL3bffXFHA.2664@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...
> O.K. I have a problem with drive letter assignments.
>
>
>
> I'm building a new machine. An ASUS A8V, AMD 3500+, 200MB SATA as primary
> (divided into two partitions), and a 300MB IDE as file storage
>
>
>
> I first installed Win32. It went into the first partition of the SATA and
> called itself C: as nice as can be. FWIW I had not formatted the second
> half of that SATA drive. Anyhow the IDE drive showed up as G: Again all
> nice and happy.
>
> Then I installed my purchased copy of Win64 (not an upgrade). It loaded
> well. Established a dual boot BOOT.INI and happily ran and registered
> itself over my wireless NIC.
>
>
>
> Both systems seem to happily co-exist.
>
>
>
> However, the Win64 system installed itself as Drive G: and generally
> loused up my drive assignments. (I think the data drive in Win64 is
> called D)
>
>
>
> I expect to be running both systems for a while. I expect to use Win64
> for extensive film and photo editing and the older Win32 mostly because I
> have some substantial driver problems with some of my commercial grade
> printers and scanners.
>
>
>
> It is kind of important that my data (picture) files have the same drive
> letter assignment in both systems. I, of course, can't merely change the
> drive letter of the Win64 operating system. I haven't loaded any of the
> applications on either system yet (I had expected trouble) and I will
> happily blow away either, or both.
>
>
>
> I sure would appreciate some suggestions on how to rebuild this machine to
> get Win32 on C: and Win64 on D:. I don't much care what drive assignment I
> put the data disk on.
>
>
>
> Thanks for your help.
>
>