Replaced defective Drive (O:) Installed New HD and Can't Rename it (O:)

[cplevel42]

The old defective drive was the 12th HD - Drive O:. I replaced it, initialized it, formatted it NTFS, and then tried to label it as drive O:, but the drop down menu in XP only gave me WXYZ for drive letter choices. How do I manually get that drive "12" that is labeled as W: to be O: ???

Thanks in advance for any advice!

[networkswiz]

That's incredible. Even a server doesn't have that many hard drives. OK, to do what you want,
Click Start, Control Panel, Performance and Maintenance, Administrative Tools, Computer Management, Disk Management.
Right-click your disk W:, choose Change Drive Letter, click Change, then choose O:
Then click OK. Ignore the message that follows, just say YES and you are done.

[redwudz]

If 'O' isn't available in Administrative Tools, the OS probably thinks it's still being used somewhere. Maybe a registry problem. Make sure none of your programs or shortcuts point to 'O' and try again. If all else fails, name it to a unused letter.

BTW, I have drives starting at 'L' that go all the way to 'Z', on my servers. But that has no effect on the individual computers on the LAN that may have the same drive letters. The servers have about 8 - 9 drives each.

[bevills1]

The only time I've had this type problem is when another drive was changed to "O" without my realizing it. Check to see if that's the issue, and just rename "O" to another available drive letter first and then rename the new hard drive to "O."

[cplevel42]

Thanks guys. I still doesn't work. There has to be another manual way of doing it in the dos prompt window. Thanks again.

[Number Six]

When you removed the defective drive "O" - did you uninstall it from the OS first? If not, then the OS will not release the letter assignment. Try putting the defective drive back in, and either uninstall it, or change its assignment to "Z", so the OS can release "O".

[INFRATOM]

That's what you are asking for Assign command http://www.csulb.edu/~murdock/assign.html
If letter in windows is not available most likely it cannot be assigned in DOS either. Does letter O show under disk management? If you have a server OS you can map drive to it and it will feel the same.

[cplevel42]

I reinstalled it, named it Z, uninstalled it from the OS, and then removed it, and then it was released.

Thanks guys (Number Six)!!!

[handyguy]

Yes, you can also do that in the registry.