Reply #6: You can reassign drive letters in XP

[bvar22]

Go To:
Control Panel
Administrative Tools
Computer Management
Storage
Disk Management

click on the partition
(Drop down Menu)Action
All Tasks
Change Drive Letters and Paths
(click)Change Choose New Letter


Partition Magic offers a "Drive Mapping" feature that will search for all references to a drive that has had the drive letter reassigned, and change all pointers to the new drive letter. XP may also do this. I've never used it.

PMagic does offer a feature that partitions and formats for Linux installations. I have used this many times for experimenting with different flavors of Linux in Dual Boot setups with XP. As long as you put the Linux Partitions at the end of your hard drive, there is no confusion with Drive Letter changes. Works great.

PMagic 8 comes with a utility called "PQBOOT" that is fun.
PQBoot allows multiple installations of Win/Dos OSes WITHOUT using a boot manager.
It sets up "hidden" partitions for each OS and allows the user to select which partition to "Unhide" and set to "active" for booting. Put each OS in a small partition with only those files and utilities that directly affect the particular OS. Put everything else (3rd party software) in other common partitions that are accessible to all OSes.
Since the other OSes are "hidden", drive letter assignment stays the same no matter which OS you boot to.
I still keep a small hidden partition with WinMe because I like having access to the more powerful command line Dos utilities that XP discontinued.
A serious gamer could "strip down" a hot rodded installation of XP that only loads services and drivers necessary for games, but keep a more functional "multipurpose" XP which could be booted to for stuff other than games.


The above arrangement does not work with Dual Boot Linux/XP, though the Linux bootloader is superb.

Partition Magic 8 has been problem free for me. It is one of the few pieces of software I REALLY like. It is the first thing I install on a new HardDrive (after the OS).

Cheers