Hard disk with no drive letter

[Mike Corbett]

I don't know whether it's relevant or not but I found an
article on the Microsoft Knowledge Base (#330140)
pertaining to the symptoms I am experiencing. It's to do
with Roxio Go Back (Norton System Works) which modifies
the master boot record.....Unsure as yet how to proceed
but I'm on the case
>-----Original Message-----
>I am also posting this message under a new topic in this
>forum in hopes of a quick response.
>
>I have a similar problem. Windows XP Pro, SP1.
>
>My Western Digital 180 Gig HDD failed, partially, and I
>recieved a replacement drive via an advance ship RMA.
My
>system partition and one of the extended volumes are
>formated NTFS. The third partition is presently FAT32.
>
>I used Data Lifeguard tools to do a sector by sector
image
>(Similar to Ghost or Driver Image), I ended up with
drive
>letter problems.
>
>With mine, the newly imaged drive (hereafter referred to
>as Master) was assigned drive letters I (system
>Partition), J, & K. The Dying HDD still maintained it's
>original drive letters of C, E, & F despite being
>connected as a slave.
>
>I opened disk manager and assigned the slave drive E & F
>partitions new drive letters (Y & Z) then removed the
>pagefile from C. After rebooting, I assigned Drive
>letters E & F to J & K. So far, so good. Here's where
>the problems began.
>
>When I changed the drive letter C to X (to make C
>available to the new HDD) and rebooted, Windows XP was
>unable to access the registration information and would
>not allow me to log in. I tried to replace the MBR 1st,
>but this did not help. I was afraid to replace the
entire
>boot record from thew management console because of a
>warning about non-standard partitions and the
possibility
>of making all volumes innaccessible. I had to run the
>Data Lifeguard tools again in order to copy the I
>partition on the master back over the former C partition
>on the slave. This permitted me to access the OS again.
>
>Next, I ran XP setup from the OS while it was
accessible.
>When the system rebooted for the 1st time, I powered off
>and disconnected the slave drive, then resumed setup.
>Setup completed successfully, and I could now access the
>OS from the new drive exclusively. So far, so good.
>
>The remaining problem, however, is that my system
>partition remains named "I." I am unable to change the
>drive letter because it is the System partition which is
>in use.
>
>Can anyone suggest how to correct this problem? I have
>the follwing tools available:
>
>Ghost, Data LifeGuard tools, Partition Magic 8, and NTFS
>Pro (which allows me to mount the NTFS Volumes from a
dos
>boot disk and run DOS commands, much like the recovery
>Console.
>
>I still have the old drive (Slave) although it does
>experience intermittent read errors. I really want to
end
>up with the system partition as C, not I. At this time
I
>am unable to access many programs that refer to the C
>drive.
>
>Thanks in advance.
>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>I recently had the unfortunate experience of primary
hard
>>disk failure. I use the primary for the OS and all
>>software. Replaced the primary and installed XP.
>>
>>My secondary hard drive contains all my data. This is
>>recognised in BIOS, appears in Disk Management but is
not
>>assigned a drive letter and you can't give it one as
the
>>option to do this is greyed out - the only available
>>options are to delete or help.
>>
>>My former system was up to XP SP1 with probably all the
>>upgrades installed.
>>
>>I've tried all the IDE channel configurations,
>>troubleshooters, knowledge base, help files and can't
>>find the problem.
>>
>>There was nothing wrong with it before?
>>.
>>
>.
>