if you run out of drive letters you can always assign the drive to a folder. This SF tutorial explains.
Mount Drives or Partitions as a Folder - Windows 7 Forums
That's ok if you are just using the partition as extended storage, it's no use if you need to identify it as a drive, or you already have paths mapped to folders on the volume.
It's a backwards step (to manually reassign a path instead of a mounted drive) if you use the facility introduced in Windows 8 to rapidly mount an ISO file or a VHD by double-clicking it. Windows gives the mount the next available drive letter - until you get to z: + 1 when windows gets confused, and after an age decides it cannot mount the media.
Yep,that makes sense to me.
To cut a long story short, there has always got to be a way in which drives are identifiable, and to me a simple letter is just as good as any.
Well said
The trouble is that the "simple letter" changes in a multibooting system. In fact several and all of the drive letters and their order can change if you have different operating systems on the same machine when the booted system takes the "c:\ drive".
Now, many people have not only Windows 7 on one partition, but Windows 8 on another. Perhaps they have 64 and 32-bit versions, and legacy Vista and XP disks that they boot from as well, since virtualization isn't always as workable as it would be in an ideal world. They also plug in USB drives, and depending which OS they booted from, and which removable storage they have, the same drive letters refer to totally different drives disks and partitions. There is network storage and cloud storage too.
I work a lot with embedded windows, and each needs to boot from its own partition.
Here below I compare DiskPart volume information from 2 different Windows systems running on the same physical machine. Note that the Drive letter assignment has no logical pattern, whereas the volume listings remain in the same order at least, even if out of alignment by virtue of an extra (virtual) dvd-rom drive in the windows 7 setup.
(Note that the Windows 7 drive has been assigned a drive letter of B: in the Windows 8 listing. This is because the Windows 8 installation hid the system drive, which is on the same volume as the Windows 7 boot volume, and I assigned the drive letter of the unused second floppy drive.)
Code:
[B]This is from volume 13 label windows8 c: drive[/B]
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.2.8250]
(c) 2012 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
C:\windows\system32>diskpart
Microsoft DiskPart version 6.2.8250
Copyright (C) 1999-2012 Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: DEF
DISKPART> list volume
Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- --------
Volume 0 P DVD-ROM 0 B No Media
Volume 1 B Win7Boot NTFS Partition 73 GB Healthy System
Volume 2 N Win7x86 NTFS Partition 72 GB Healthy
Volume 3 O tc180 NTFS Partition 14 GB Healthy
Volume 4 E swap NTFS Partition 5000 MB Healthy Pagefile
Volume 5 F wes64tPC NTFS Partition 14 GB Healthy
Volume 6 G wes180 NTFS Partition 14 GB Healthy
Volume 7 H EMB8 NTFS Partition 14 GB Healthy
Volume 8 I W8-64 NTFS Partition 14 GB Healthy
Volume 9 J TC64365 NTFS Partition 14 GB Healthy
Volume 10 K vanillapod NTFS Partition 14 GB Healthy
Volume 11 L win2kas NTFS Partition 14 GB Healthy
Volume 12 M NewTPC NTFS Partition 14 GB Healthy
Volume 13 C windows8 NTFS Partition 15 GB Healthy Boot
Volume 14 D winXPBoot NTFS Partition 74 GB Healthy
DISKPART> sel disk 0
Disk 0 is now the selected disk.
DISKPART> list part
Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 Primary 73 GB 31 KB
Partition 2 Primary 72 GB 73 GB
Partition 3 Primary 14 GB 146 GB
Partition 0 Extended 137 GB 160 GB
Partition 4 Logical 5000 MB 160 GB
Partition 5 Logical 14 GB 165 GB
Partition 6 Logical 14 GB 180 GB
Partition 7 Logical 14 GB 194 GB
Partition 8 Logical 14 GB 209 GB
Partition 9 Logical 14 GB 224 GB
Partition 10 Logical 14 GB 238 GB
Partition 11 Logical 14 GB 253 GB
Partition 12 Logical 14 GB 268 GB
Partition 13 Logical 15 GB 282 GB
DISKPART>
[B]This is from volume 2 label Win7Boot c: drive [/B]
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
C:\windows\system32>diskpart
Microsoft DiskPart version 6.1.7601
Copyright (C) 1999-2008 Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: DEF
DISKPART> list vol
Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- --------
Volume 0 F DVD-ROM 0 B No Media
Volume 1 R DVD-ROM 0 B No Media
Volume 2 C Win7Boot NTFS Partition 73 GB Healthy System
Volume 3 H Win7x86 NTFS Partition 72 GB Healthy
Volume 4 G tc180 NTFS Partition 14 GB Healthy
Volume 5 D swap NTFS Partition 5000 MB Healthy Pagefile
Volume 6 I wes64tPC NTFS Partition 14 GB Healthy
Volume 7 J wes180 NTFS Partition 14 GB Healthy
Volume 8 K EMB8 NTFS Partition 14 GB Healthy
Volume 9 L W8-64 NTFS Partition 14 GB Healthy
Volume 10 M TC64365 NTFS Partition 14 GB Healthy
Volume 11 N vanillapod NTFS Partition 14 GB Healthy
Volume 12 O win2kas NTFS Partition 14 GB Healthy
Volume 13 P NewTPC NTFS Partition 14 GB Healthy
Volume 14 Q windows8 NTFS Partition 15 GB Healthy
Volume 15 E winXPBoot NTFS Partition 74 GB Healthy
DISKPART> sel disk 0
Disk 0 is now the selected disk.
DISKPART> list part
Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 Primary 73 GB 31 KB
Partition 2 Primary 72 GB 73 GB
Partition 3 Primary 14 GB 146 GB
Partition 0 Extended 137 GB 160 GB
Partition 4 Logical 5000 MB 160 GB
Partition 5 Logical 14 GB 165 GB
Partition 6 Logical 14 GB 180 GB
Partition 7 Logical 14 GB 194 GB
Partition 8 Logical 14 GB 209 GB
Partition 9 Logical 14 GB 224 GB
Partition 10 Logical 14 GB 238 GB
Partition 11 Logical 14 GB 253 GB
Partition 12 Logical 14 GB 268 GB
Partition 13 Logical 15 GB 282 GB
DISKPART>
The partition listings are identical. In order to preserve Unique references to each volume (and thus the physical location of the required data) only 3 pieces of information are needed:
Media type - Floppy, Hard, Optical etc
the disk identifier - 0, 1, 2 etc
the partition identifier - 0, 1, 2, etc
It's trivial for a PC to use any and all of this information to run the system on. It does not need to be limited to 26 drives though.
Once, PC users were limited to 2 1.2 MB 5.25 inch floppy disks. An instruction would appear on screen:
"Insert disk in drive B"
and then MS-DOS would write files with 8.3 length filenames in directories with usually 8.0 length names.
With Windows 95, long filenames got rid of the concept of 8.3 length limited filenames for most PC Users. It's high time we dumped the C: drive letter assignment too, and Windows 8 could be the paradigm-shifting version of Windows to do it.