Allotting a drive letter to an external hard drive

**ThompsonHarris** · 07-01-2010, 01:23 PM

I am start Windows XP Media Centre Edition and I am have problem with my external hard drive not brining assigned a letter. It shows in the computer management tab of the Admin Tools but it is not bringing a drive letter. What I have questioned if there is a way to give it a drive letter without formatting the hard drive?

The hard drive that is in there is formatted with Linux if that makes any difference.

Thanks in advance.

**GonzalezBrown** · 07-01-2010, 01:24 PM

Have enjoyable trying to assign a drive letter to several Linux volumes as booted in Windows. This is a free tool available however to allow Windows to access Linux volumes with assign drive letters

**LewisClark** · 07-01-2010, 01:25 PM

For strictly XP and Windows use however you are going to find out rather quick that once you have anything on the drive backed up you will be better seeing reformatted to the NT File System or normally known as NTFS. That will make things a great deal easier especially if the drive is disconnecting at times, used on more than one machine.

**WalkerCook** · 07-01-2010, 01:26 PM

I downloaded the program and it workings okay. But the problem is that after I assign the drive letter and I try to access it using My PC, the error showed that "The disk in drive Z is not formatted. asked to format What do I do at this point? If I format it I will lose all the data I want to transfer off it.

**PerezMorris** · 07-01-2010, 01:27 PM

The best choice any time you are dealing with a Linux partition anywhere is to have a live Linux distro on hand similar to ubuntu or the larger Knoppix live that can see onto both Windows and Linux partitions. As booted in one of those you can simply copy files back and forth among the MS and Linux volumes.

**HallMiller** · 07-01-2010, 01:28 PM

actually I wrote a direct for how to use a usb flash drive for data recovery from either really while intended to exemplify how to do that for Windows machines.

**AllenBrown** · 07-01-2010, 01:29 PM

With the external drive connect in you would only boot from a live cd and open up two explorer windows referred to as the file browser windows to gain access to the files there and be able to perform copy paste or move file process. Once you have everything backed up then you just go ahead and reformat it.

**ScottWright** · 07-01-2010, 01:30 PM

Ubuntu 9.04 is the most recent release with ubuntu being an easy to learn.

**BakerJones** · 07-01-2010, 01:31 PM

I think to install Linux Mint again on my hard drive that is now in my computer.

**AdamsClark** · 07-01-2010, 01:32 PM

You’ll want that to be at least in the Ext2 but preferably Ext 3 format then at least for the root and change partitions. The root is the one that can look a drive letter as the disk management will just show that any change partition you make is present while not being able to rise that in Windows.

**TorresScott** · 07-01-2010, 01:33 PM

One time Windows 7 is out in real form I have an extra drive now for setting up ubuntu and even Knoppix installations on one of the further hard drives. currently I have those installed on usb flash drives to keep the usual HDs free for testing dissimilar windows 7 combinations there.