question about drive letters

Posted: 08-11-2008, 08:14 AM
Once upon a time the letters A and B were reserved for designating floppy
disk drives. Now that those drives are obsolete, why has the standard not
been changed so that hard-drives or DVD drives can be labelled A or B. Are
those two letters doomed never to be used again? Or are the powers-that-be
in the computer industry saving them for some future use?

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Responses to "question about drive letters"

DDW
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Re: question about drive letters
Posted: 08-11-2008, 10:04 AM
On Mon, 11 Aug 2008 03:14:20 -0400, "Robert" <me@here.com> wrote:
>Once upon a time the letters A and B were reserved for designating floppy
>disk drives. Now that those drives are obsolete, why has the standard not
>been changed so that hard-drives or DVD drives can be labelled A or B. Are
>those two letters doomed never to be used again? Or are the powers-that-be
>in the computer industry saving them for some future use?
As far as I can tell, you can use them for whatever you want.

Go into Disk Management and take a look. Try to change one of your
drives to eithe A or B (don't change your C drive)... the option is
there to do it.
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Robert
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Re: question about drive letters
Posted: 08-11-2008, 08:50 PM
You are right. The letters A and B are available for use. I changed my
DVD/RW drive to A and my external hard-drive to B (for Back-up because that
is currently all it is used for).

If those letters are free on new systems, why does the OS skip them when
assigning letters to things? Wouldn't it make more sense for the main
hard-drive to be A and go from there?

"DDW" <ddwright@KILLSPAMcomcast.net> wrote in message
news:i300a4t67h86uumhi3c296bii1lu7ccb26@4ax.com...
> On Mon, 11 Aug 2008 03:14:20 -0400, "Robert" <me@here.com> wrote:
>
>>Once upon a time the letters A and B were reserved for designating floppy
>>disk drives. Now that those drives are obsolete, why has the standard not
>>been changed so that hard-drives or DVD drives can be labelled A or B.
>>Are
>>those two letters doomed never to be used again? Or are the
>>powers-that-be
>>in the computer industry saving them for some future use?
>
> As far as I can tell, you can use them for whatever you want.
>
> Go into Disk Management and take a look. Try to change one of your
> drives to eithe A or B (don't change your C drive)... the option is
> there to do it.
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