Drive letter A: and B: not displayed?

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Dirk
Posts: 187
Joined: 02.06.2010, 13:38

Drive letter A: and B: not displayed?

#1 Post by Dirk » 02.05.2015, 22:57

I have changed the drive letter of an external 2,5 hard disk from (Z:, FC had displayed) to A: and B:. The letters are shown in every program, in Win Explorer, but are not in FC.

How could I make FC display drive A:, B:?

Letter E: also is shown in FC.
FC newest stable version, portable
Win 7 64bit

joby_toss
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Re: Drive letter A: and B: not displayed?

#2 Post by joby_toss » 03.05.2015, 07:40

Make sure they're not hidden:

Image

If it's still not showing, maybe FC reserved those letters exclusively for floppy's...

Dirk
Posts: 187
Joined: 02.06.2010, 13:38

Re: Drive letter A: and B: not displayed?

#3 Post by Dirk » 03.05.2015, 14:41

Many thanks, joby_toss,

Oh well, I remember to have seen those settings, yes, the option was activated (by default?). Now it works, FC shows A:.

Well, well, the drive letters were (and still are) not shown in every program (it is not right, what I said), but in Mini Tool Partition Wizard they were not displayed as well. In the Win 7 program (to partition, format etc.) these letters are shown. Why is it like that? Is there may be a drawback using theses letters?

I am wondering what reason for that option might be needed? Are floppies still in use?

Many thanks again.
FC newest stable version, portable
Win 7 64bit

Free4all
Posts: 428
Joined: 30.09.2014, 21:12

Re: Drive letter A: and B: not displayed?

#4 Post by Free4all » 04.05.2015, 03:58

Dirk wrote:Many thanks, joby_toss,
...
Well, well, the drive letters were (and still are) not shown in every program (it is not right, what I said), but in Mini Tool Partition Wizard they were not displayed as well. In the Win 7 program (to partition, format etc.) these letters are shown. Why is it like that? Is there may be a drawback using theses letters?

I am wondering what reason for that option might be needed? Are floppies still in use?

Many thanks again.
I wouldn't recommend making an external hard drive register as A: or B:. It just seems like it could cause a problem with something, and taking the chance of losing data or something getting messed up wouldn't be worth it. But the more I think about it, I don't see why technically you could not do it, especially in an OS like Windows that uses a layer of abstraction for drive letters.

Dirk
Posts: 187
Joined: 02.06.2010, 13:38

Re: Drive letter A: and B: not displayed?

#5 Post by Dirk » 04.05.2015, 14:46

Thank you, Free4all.
But the more I think about it, I don't see why technically you could not do it, especially in an OS like Windows that uses a layer of abstraction for drive letters.
Well, you can, I did, runs...appears to run like usual. I cannot see any difference to other letters.

Code: Select all

 It just seems like it could cause a problem with something, and taking the chance of losing data or something getting messed up wouldn't be worth it. 
Well, well, that's my thought as well. But it would be pretty nice to use A: or / and B: for the external 2,5 drive / drives I more or lesse permanently want to have plugged in. I cannot find any usable information, that I have found: http://www.howtogeek...rives-used-for:
Less an answer, more of an anecdote. In this Microsoft article, it says:
“You can assign the letters C through Z to each drive on your computer. A and B are usually reserved for floppy disk drives, but if your computer does not have floppy disk drives, you can assign A and B to volumes.”

So when I built a new computer recently with two internal drives, one for the OS and one for data, I thought, hey!, I’ll make my data drive “A”. I felt all rebellious until I discovered that Windows will not index drives lettered A or B. :(

Took me quite a while to figure out what the problem was, but I found some other people who suffered the same issue when they used A or B for a [primary] drive. As soon as I assigned that drive a different letter, windows indexed the drive. So much for being rebellious.
FC newest stable version, portable
Win 7 64bit

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