Do I dare mess with drive letters?

As I add a second HD or connect the eSATA drive, the drive letters continue to get changed. I have no assigned any, letting Vista do it, and perhaps that was a mistake.

HD1: [two partitions] are now C and F
HD2: [two parts] became E and D
esata [two parts] became I an J

G is DVD
H is that mysery hidden recovery thing.

I have labeled the drives to avoid confustion, so perhaps just leave them be?

I would like
HD1: C and D
HD2: E and F

I would think I can chang the drive letters to something like R and S, then go back and set them right.

Is it worth the potential problems?

Right now, some shortcuts are messed up due to changing drive letters, but not a showstopper.

robertpri said:

As I add a second HD or connect the eSATA drive, the drive letters continue to get changed. I have no assigned any, letting Vista do it, and perhaps that was a mistake.

HD1: [two partitions] are now C and F
HD2: [two parts] became E and D
esata [two parts] became I an J

G is DVD
H is that mysery hidden recovery thing.

I have labeled the drives to avoid confustion, so perhaps just leave them be?

I would like
HD1: C and D
HD2: E and F

Is it worth the potential problems?

Right now, some shortcuts are messed up due to changing drive letters, but not a showstopper.

Click to expand...

Hi Robert,

You can change the drive letters except for C:\ where windows is installed. Be aware though that if programs are installed on another drive and you change the drive letter then these programs will not work anymore,

If you are not sure it is best to leave them alone

robertpri said:

I would think I can chang the drive letters to something like R and S, then go back and set them right.

Click to expand...

Yes this is right

robertpri said:

Is it worth the potential problems?

Click to expand...

You have to know this

Pooch

Thanks pooch. I already have the shortcut problem every time I do something. I connect the eSATA backup drive to run a backup, but the drive letters changed so the backup program has "moved". I guess it's best to get it stable and then set them.

more: I normally use Partition Magic 9 to make such changes. They seem to make drive and partition changes better than anyone else.

more more: interesting results. I have two matched drives, idential, for dual boot. If I boot one way, I get:

vista c
data d
second vista e
second data f

but if I reboot to the second drive, I get

vista c
data f
second vista d
second data e

really really odd, but I can get it to work.

Admin, please close this because it's kind of a deadend.
thanks