# duplicate drive letters



## dustyhoffsky (Sep 25, 2000)

I have a new drive letter that duplicates everything on an existing drive letter.

My Hard Drive setup is a Primary Master 5GB with C: and E: partitions. I also have a 15GB Prmary Slave with 5GB partioned as d: and the rest unpartioned (to install other OSs on).

My CDRom, which used to be F: is now G: So now, Win98 Explorer shows a new drive F: that duplicates everything on drive E:.

When I go to Device Manager/Disk Drives and look at the settings tab of the Master drive it shows the current drive assignments as C: and F:!! But,in DOS there is no F: drive, nor does FDISK report an F:

Now here is the fun part. This all happened after I tried installing Mandrake Linux over a month ago and I have let the problem slide so I hope my memory is ok. I tried to install Mandrake Linux, from a Maximum PC magazine CD, onto the unpartioned space of the primary slave. But it would never properly install. I tried it several times. Some times it would complete the installation and sometimes not. When it would do a complete installation, I would find that after booting to Linux I would get some kind of error msg - I cant remember what it was.

I also installed LILO boot loader. After giving up on the Linux install, I did something to try and uninstall everything through LILO - again I cant remember what I did. After this, I couldnt boot back into windows. I Did a FDISK/MBR and this restored the ability to boot back to windows but I now have this extra drive letter and only in windows and not in DOS.

Where does windows assign drive letters? I mucked about in the registry (fortunatly didnt seem to mess anything up) but couldnt find anything that related to drive assignments. I'm not asking for help with Linux or answers to two problems, just the extra drive letter problem. And it is more than just an annoyance, for several days last week I couldnt access my CDRom. But then it seemed to correct itself, but with it still residing as G: Does anyone have any idea what could be causing this duplicate drive letter? Thank you for any help. -- DH

[This message has been edited by dustyhoffsky (edited 09-25-2000).]

[This message has been edited by dustyhoffsky (edited 09-25-2000).]


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## ETS (Oct 13, 1999)

What did you do with the extra partition after you gave up on Linux? Seems to me like that is where the extra drive letter is coming from.
If Linux has to be installed to a primary partition (I don't recall if it does or not) and that partition is still there then it would receive a drive letter prior to the extended partition on your master drive. In other words, it's being assigned E: and your extended on the master drive is picking up F:.
If E: still has a linux format, maybe it is confusing Windows and you as well.


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## dustyhoffsky (Sep 25, 2000)

Hey thanks for the advice, ETS, I had nearly given up on any one replying. I'll have to check by booting with the Mandrake disk and going to its FDISK proqram and checking. Again, thanks for the help.



> quote:
> 
> Originally posted by ETS:
> *What did you do with the extra partition after you gave up on Linux? Seems to me like that is where the extra drive letter is coming from.
> ...


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## infix (Aug 26, 2000)

as far as i know only primary hard drive partitions are bootable, which would explain your linux problem.

as for changing drive assignments, there's a really easy way to change non-boot drives/partitions in windows 2000 (which is what i'm using) but i'm not sure if it works in win98. right-click on "my computer" and go to "manage." there you find easy to use tools to add/change/remove drive letters. if that doesn't work in 98, there might still be such a thing, look around in control panel and such for "computer management," that's what the utility is called.


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