Solved Drive Letters - inadequate and outdated?

fafhrd

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C:\ is a strange designation for the boot volume of our Windows system, yet however many different Windows systems we boot into on a single machine, most of them decide that this is where they live. A:\ and B:\ are hardly ever used today. A:\ and B:\ were the designated drive letters for the first and second floppy drives on early PCs. C:\ was used for the first hard drive. Macs and Linux just don't use drive letters - surely it is time for Windows systems to stop using them, isn't it?

Drive letters are such a dinosaurian hangover from the early days of MS-DOS - isn't it about time that Microsoft dumped them? Long filenames have been available to users of Windows for over a decade and a half, why can't we just use the volume name instead of a drive letter?

It is so easy to use removable media, virtual, network, and cloud-based drives, the 26 letters of the English alphabet are not enough - or are soon not going to be enough for all the data locations we shall need.
 

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We're lucky they didn't change C: for CXZW&$: in Windows 8 in their effort to make things stupidly worse.
 

My Computer

System One

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    Windows 8.1 x64
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Yes, it's high time we got rid of drive letters. I found an option to disable them from being displayed in My Computer but they're still there.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 Consumer Preview
By convention, C is reserved for use as the identification letter for the drive/partition containing the current running OS. A and B were/are reserved for floppy drives (even though many systems no longer include them). That leaves the rest (D onwards) for other drives/partitions on your system. If MS decide to get rid of drive letters, we would still need a means by which we can identify a drive. I would have thought that, even with just a total of 26 drive IDs available, that this would be enough for most people.

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.
 

My Computer

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    Windows 8.1 Pro RTM x64
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    Dwarf Dwf/11/2012 r09/2013
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    Intel Core-i5-3570K 4-core @ 3.4GHz (Ivy Bridge) (OC 4.2GHz)
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    Asus Eee PC 1011PX Netbook (Windows 7 x86 Starter)
It is so easy to use removable media, virtual, network, and cloud-based drives, the 26 letters of the English alphabet are not enough - or are soon not going to be enough for all the data locations we shall need
We'll use Kanji - :D
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Vista and Win7
    System Manufacturer/Model
    2xHP, 2xGateway, 1xDell, 1xSony
    Hard Drives
    5 SSDs and 12 HDs
You don't actually need to assign drive letters any more, but whatever.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 Home 64-bit
    System Manufacturer/Model
    N/A
    Motherboard
    Gigabyte H67A-UD3H-B3 rev 1.0
    Memory
    8 GB DDR3
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVIDIA GTX480
With automounting of VHD and ISO files, plus mapped network shares, and multiple USB and hard drives, what happens when your Z: drive is used up?

Answer: You get couldn't mount... error messages.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 Pro with Media Center
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    HP COMPAQ Presario CQ57
    CPU
    AMD E- 300 APU with Radion HD Graphics 1.30GHz
    Motherboard
    inbuilt
    Memory
    4GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    ATI
    Sound Card
    High Definition Audio on-board
    Monitor(s) Displays
    notebook
    Screen Resolution
    1366x768
    Hard Drives
    Seagate ST9500325AS
    Google drive 15GB
    Skydrive 25GB
    BT Cloud
    PSU
    external 20v
    Case
    Laptop
    Cooling
    pretty good
    Keyboard
    inbuilt
    Mouse
    touchpad
    Internet Speed
    BT Infinity Unlimited - 80 up 20 down =70/16 really
    Browser
    Chrome Canary usually
    Antivirus
    Windows Defender and Malwarebytes
    Other Info
    no Start menu modifications
    Upgraded with no issues to 8.0 and to 8.1
If MS decide to get rid of drive letters, we would still need a means by which we can identify a drive.
Yeah, I guess we'd have to give them some sort of name.

I would have thought that, even with just a total of 26 drive IDs available, that this would be enough for most people.
Isn't that what they said about 512KB of RAM?

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.
Names are more unique (a single letter is limited to 26 possibilities; a text string can be theoretically infinite) and more descriptive.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 Consumer Preview
Since I multiboot, with my system volume being the same as my Windows 7 x64 boot volume, each time when I install a new Windows system on another partition, for example Windows 8 CP, I have to go to diskmgmt.msc or diskpart to reassign a drive letter for Windows 7 x64 because the new installation hides the system volume by not registering a drive letter for the system volume in the registry. My Windows 7 x64 partition is now usually B:\ because I will certainly never have 2 floppy drives attached. I can't use A:\ because just occasionally I attach a USB floppy drive for some retro-computing task. I can't leave it without a drive letter, because I need to transfer files to and from it, and without a drive letter - it remains hidden to the other system.

Crazy. Drives could be mounted with symlinks to folders, as in 'nixes such as dev\hda1, dev\hda2, dev\fd0, and given aliases as the user desires, even letters a-z with colons in tow if required.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 Pro with Media Center
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    HP COMPAQ Presario CQ57
    CPU
    AMD E- 300 APU with Radion HD Graphics 1.30GHz
    Motherboard
    inbuilt
    Memory
    4GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    ATI
    Sound Card
    High Definition Audio on-board
    Monitor(s) Displays
    notebook
    Screen Resolution
    1366x768
    Hard Drives
    Seagate ST9500325AS
    Google drive 15GB
    Skydrive 25GB
    BT Cloud
    PSU
    external 20v
    Case
    Laptop
    Cooling
    pretty good
    Keyboard
    inbuilt
    Mouse
    touchpad
    Internet Speed
    BT Infinity Unlimited - 80 up 20 down =70/16 really
    Browser
    Chrome Canary usually
    Antivirus
    Windows Defender and Malwarebytes
    Other Info
    no Start menu modifications
    Upgraded with no issues to 8.0 and to 8.1

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 7 x64 SP1 Home Premium/Win 8.1 in VBox
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Hewlett-Packard/G62 Notebook
    CPU
    Intel(R) Core(TM) i3 CPU M 330 @ 2.13GHz
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    Hewlett-Packard 1425
    Memory
    8 GB DDR3
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    Intel(R) HD Graphics
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    Realtek High Definition Audio
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    Builtin
    Screen Resolution
    1366 x 768 x 32 bits (4294967296 colors) @ 60 Hz
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    250 GB SATA Hard Disk Drive 7200 rpm
    2TB Seagate GoFlex USB 2 Drive
    1TB Iomega Prestige USB 2 Drive
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    1TB Iomega NAS.
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    Microsoft Bluetooth Notebook Mouse 5000
    Internet Speed
    20Mb/sec
Well said :D
Yep,that makes sense to me.
Have I slipped into a parallel universe here? Drive letters are extremely limited in number (only twenty-six), barely descriptive at all, and not persistent across multiple machines and installations. Drive names can be personalised ("Ketsuban's Phone" is more useful than "Removable Disk (E:)") or used to differentiate different items of the same category ("Ketsuban's Phone (Internal Storage)" vs "Ketsuban's Phone (SD Card)") and are carried across between different machines.

Drive names are objectively a superior choice for uniquely identifying drives over drive letters.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 Consumer Preview
Well said :D
Yep,that makes sense to me.
Have I slipped into a parallel universe here? Drive letters are extremely limited in number (only twenty-six), barely descriptive at all, and not persistent across multiple machines and installations. Drive names can be personalised ("Ketsuban's Phone" is more useful than "Removable Disk (E:)") or used to differentiate different items of the same category ("Ketsuban's Phone (Internal Storage)" vs "Ketsuban's Phone (SD Card)") and are carried across between different machines.

Drive names are objectively a superior choice for uniquely identifying drives over drive letters.

Correct as is shown in Linux but it would be difficult to get rid of in Windows. Just think of the problems with Legacy applications it would cause.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 7 x64 SP1 Home Premium/Win 8.1 in VBox
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Hewlett-Packard/G62 Notebook
    CPU
    Intel(R) Core(TM) i3 CPU M 330 @ 2.13GHz
    Motherboard
    Hewlett-Packard 1425
    Memory
    8 GB DDR3
    Graphics Card(s)
    Intel(R) HD Graphics
    Sound Card
    Realtek High Definition Audio
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Builtin
    Screen Resolution
    1366 x 768 x 32 bits (4294967296 colors) @ 60 Hz
    Hard Drives
    250 GB SATA Hard Disk Drive 7200 rpm
    2TB Seagate GoFlex USB 2 Drive
    1TB Iomega Prestige USB 2 Drive
    1.5TB Iomega Prestige USB 2 Drive (Samsung)
    1TB Iomega NAS.
    Mouse
    Microsoft Bluetooth Notebook Mouse 5000
    Internet Speed
    20Mb/sec
Dont get me wrong but i think 26 letters is more than enough for most of the ppl if not to every1 with some minor exceptions, i for example use 2 hdds and i have 6 drives that are more than enough (max that i used where 8 drives). As for a suggestion i think your point is somehow good but a simple drive like E: is more practical and simpler than a really long name, that's why i think is still used now.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 7 Ultimate x64, Windows 8 CP x64
Would the person that ran out of drive letters please speak up - and then we'll see how to fix it.

And what is wrong naming the drives in addition to the letter - rather than e.g. 'New Volume' for each partition.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Vista and Win7
    System Manufacturer/Model
    2xHP, 2xGateway, 1xDell, 1xSony
    Hard Drives
    5 SSDs and 12 HDs
:busted: - I at least got close (ONCE!) - but I can;t remember for the life of me why (too much beer under the belt at the time, I suspect). I have vague memories of having to search for a free drive letter, and it taking a looong time :)
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Win7 64-bit and Win8 32-bit in VM (+ others in VM)
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Asus K52F
    CPU
    i3
    Memory
    8GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    it's an i3 :)
    Sound Card
    Conexant (rubbish - or it may be the speakers)
    Screen Resolution
    1366x768
    Internet Speed
    whatever I can get - G3
Would the person that ran out of drive letters please speak up - and then we'll see how to fix it.
Why are you assuming the problem here is "people are running out of drive letters" rather than "drive letters suck"?

And what is wrong naming the drives in addition to the letter - rather than e.g. 'New Volume' for each partition.
Because the devices are still indexed by drive letter which removes the advantage of extensibility and adds a pointless layer of indirection.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 Consumer Preview
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.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 Pro with Media Center
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    HP COMPAQ Presario CQ57
    CPU
    AMD E- 300 APU with Radion HD Graphics 1.30GHz
    Motherboard
    inbuilt
    Memory
    4GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    ATI
    Sound Card
    High Definition Audio on-board
    Monitor(s) Displays
    notebook
    Screen Resolution
    1366x768
    Hard Drives
    Seagate ST9500325AS
    Google drive 15GB
    Skydrive 25GB
    BT Cloud
    PSU
    external 20v
    Case
    Laptop
    Cooling
    pretty good
    Keyboard
    inbuilt
    Mouse
    touchpad
    Internet Speed
    BT Infinity Unlimited - 80 up 20 down =70/16 really
    Browser
    Chrome Canary usually
    Antivirus
    Windows Defender and Malwarebytes
    Other Info
    no Start menu modifications
    Upgraded with no issues to 8.0 and to 8.1
Would the person that ran out of drive letters please speak up - and then we'll see how to fix it.
Why are you assuming the problem here is "people are running out of drive letters" rather than "drive letters suck"?

And what is wrong naming the drives in addition to the letter - rather than e.g. 'New Volume' for each partition.
Because the devices are still indexed by drive letter which removes the advantage of extensibility and adds a pointless layer of indirection.
That's a lot of motherhood with no practical purpose.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Vista and Win7
    System Manufacturer/Model
    2xHP, 2xGateway, 1xDell, 1xSony
    Hard Drives
    5 SSDs and 12 HDs
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