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What about B drive in 2K?

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15 replies

by geek2d 1 view

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I don't know if this is possible or not. I want to reclaim the B: drive letter and create a 500mb partition on my HD and then set windows 2k to use it as a swap file. I've got everything down except how do I reclaim the B: drive letter in 2K?

15 replies

by maxwell edison

Greetings,

I haven't tried this yet (but I will later - my Win2000 machine is being used right now), but according to my "Windows 2000 Server Administrator's Companion Book - Microsoft Press, it states the following:

"You can change the drive letter of a volume or partition at any time, and you can even have multiple paths to a given drive. Windows 2000 also allows you to change the drive letter of a removable drive such as a zip drive. To change a drive letter follow these steps:

1. Right-click on the drive in the Disk Management Console, and choose Change Drive Letter and Path.

2. A dialogue box displaying the current drive letter and any mount-point paths for the disk appears. Highlight the drive letter shown and click Edit.Select the new drive letter from the drop down list. Click OK.

3. You see a confirmation message warning ....."

(End of quote in book)

If you don't know where the Disk Management Console is, go to Help and enter Disk Management, and you'll be directed to it.

Like I said, I would have tried it before I posted this, but the worst that can happen is a big REJECT.

Good luck,

Maxwell

by maxwell edison

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I had this additional thought. You may not be able to use B-Drive, since your BIOS captures the definition for that device. I'm not sure if you can "undefine" it in your BIOS. I've never seen that option. But I suppose it depends on the BIOS. That's the first place to try to recapture it.

Regards,

Maxwell

by geek2d

Thanks for the input, but I know how to change the drive letter. I just cant set it to B:. I have checked the BIOS and there is no place that it captures the letter B:, just A:. The letter B, seems to me to be set asside in the OS somehow. Or I could just be on a quest with no end.

by lo

Not real sure but ... Drive A and B are FD and reserved by the OS for that. My Win 98 sees B: as a Zip (and another letter same drive). Not sure you can get B assigned to a HD. May be able to put a removable and get it used that way.

Question- Why would you care what the drive letter for a 500mb swap partition is? As you are just using it to swap, what difference would it make? Other than taking some allocation for buffer, drive mapping, etc. (and with today's memory, who cares?) why does it have to be B: (other than you want to do that)?

by geek2d

In our environment the network mapped drives start at F: This leaves A thru E for local stuff. The applications that we are running are pretty heavy memory hogs, and we need a sizable swap file. I have been doing some checking and feel that we couldsee an improvement in proformance if we put the swap file on a partition that is seperate from the one that holds the system files. In order to keep our environment uniform I wanted to use a drive letter that would never be use by any of our applications or that might prevent us from adding a cd burner in the future. We would spend the money for more memory if Corprate wasn't so tight about it. I have heard rumurs that there is a way to reclaim B: and thought that this would provide the best resolution to my problem.

by geek2d

Point value changed by question poster.
I am boosting the points in hopes it may inspire someone to help find the answer.

by geek2d

Point value changed by question poster.
OK The geek in me has to know how this can be done and the bullheadedness of my family's genes won't let me give up.

by nobob

I'll tell you upfront I have no idea how to make a fixed disk appear as drive B.

Since you've explained your rationale for wanting drive B, I do want to point out that in order to see improved performance from a swap file on another partition, that partition would have to be on a physically separate drive (not a "slice" of the same drive where it is now), preferably on another controller channel (assuming this is an IDE system).

by shanghai sam

OK, point noted. The swap file idea may be somewhat off. I still want to know about the B: drive letter. It is a resource that could be used in many ways in our environment. We have a slew of small drives and could connect them to the secondary controller. Still I end up running out of letters as soon as a dvd, tapedrive or burner is added.

by geek2d

Well if I dont get an answer in the next few days I'm closing this question out. thanks to all that contributed.

by mike (from canada)

This works for me but I dont know if it will work for you. Microsoft has a file called subst.exe (which came included with DOS). This file should be in the c:\windows\command folder. Go into notepad and add the line SUBST B: C:\ into your autoexec.bat file. Now when you restart windows, you will see drive B being the exact duplicate of drive C.

by geek2d

Well I tried this but since it is windows 2k it seems to be a little different. subst.exe does exist in the winnt\system32 dir but adding that line to autoexec.bat has no effect.

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