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Changing drive letters in MS-DOS 6.22?

TwiggyTwiggy
edited August 2017 in Software
So,

I have the solar system back.

When I go into my extended dos parition, and make some logical paritions, it makes the first as ":D" however this conflicts with my CD-ROM drivers.

I need to label the first logical partition other than "D", but I can't figure out how. I know of the assign command, but that doesn't actually change the drive letter, it just makes one drive think it's another.

Does anyone know anyway to change a drive letter in MS-DOS 6.22?

EDIT: So I tried installing the CD-ROM drivers before making any logical DOS drives. and it works, after I made one logical drive it labelled it D, and then on restart the CD-ROM drive was labelled E.

However, now when I made as many logical drives as possible to use all my space on the HDD, it now says there's not enough drive letters available, so I am not able to access my CD-ROM drive now.

Comments

  • BigCJBigCJ
    Add this line to CONFIG.SYS

    LASTDRIVE=Z

    This makes all drive letters assignable. The CD-ROM should be receive a drive letter now.
  • TwiggyTwiggy
    BigCJ wrote:
    Add this line to CONFIG.SYS

    LASTDRIVE=Z

    This makes all drive letters assignable. The CD-ROM should be receive a drive letter now.

    Thanks man! That worked.

    Now I I can only choose which letter I want each drive to be.
  • BigCJBigCJ
    That isn't really possible AFAIK. Changing drive letters wasn't easy until Windows came along. I'd backup the data and repartition the Logical drives.
  • TwiggyTwiggy
    BigCJ wrote:
    That isn't really possible AFAIK. Changing drive letters wasn't easy until Windows came along. I'd backup the data and repartition the Logical drives.

    and even if I did that, FDISK would just make the first logical drive "D" again, as it always does.
  • BigCJBigCJ
    edited July 2017
    Wait, what exactly are you trying to do? Have primary partition as C:, the CD-ROM as D: and then the Logical drives? It's supposed to list the hard disks and their partitions before CD drives.

    How does this contraindicate your CD-ROM driver?
  • TwiggyTwiggy
    BigCJ wrote:
    Wait, what exactly are you trying to do? Have primary partition as C:, the CD-ROM as D: and then the Logical drives? It's supposed to list the hard disks and their partitions before CD drives.

    yes, that's what I want.
  • BigCJBigCJ
    edited July 2017
    That isn't possible under DOS. See, MSCDEX presents the CD-ROM drive to DOS as a network drive, and those load after hard disks and their partitions. Even using the /L:x switch in MSCDEX doesn't help. What's wrong with your CD drive having a higher drive letter?
  • TwiggyTwiggy
    BigCJ wrote:
    That isn't possible under DOS. See, MSCDEX presents the CD-ROM drive to DOS as a network drive, and those load after hard disks and their partitions. What's wrong with your CD drive having a higher drive letter?

    Nothing, just would've liked keeping this standard.
  • BigCJBigCJ
    Having the CD drive(s) after the hard disk partitions *was* standard way back when. The "CD drive being D: no matter what" ideal came about in the Win9x-era.
  • TwiggyTwiggy
    BigCJ wrote:
    Having the CD drive(s) after the hard disk partitions *was* standard way back when. The "CD drive being D: no matter what" ideal came about in the Win9x-era.

    alright then "G" it is!
  • os2fan2os2fan2
    The OS/2 install uses R: for the ramdrive, and S: for the first cdrom drive. I use this everywhere. Under DOS, the xmsdsk freeware ramdisk, will allow you to set the ram-drive to a random letter.

    There is also something like BTTRSoft's chgltr utility, which you can swap diskettes.

    Note that Win9x reverts the cdrom back to its original letter.
  • SandpitSandpit
    Hello! first post here (just discovered this wonderful site) but hope I can help you out.

    You could assign the CDROM drive letter under DOS and it would also be respected by Win3.1 and Win9x. Here is how, from my own DOS setup: (works in DOS6 and 7, dunno about earlier)

    CONFIG.SYS
    ===========
    DEVICE=HIMEM.SYS
    DOS=HIGH,UMB
    devicehigh=c:\oakcdrom.sys /d:IDE_M001
    BREAK=ON
    files=60
    buffers=40
    lastdrive=Z


    AUTOEXEC.BAT
    ==============
    lh mscdex /l:r /d:IDE_M001
    lh mouse /y
    lh doskey
    LH smartdrv /X /V
    BREAK=ON
    SET BLASTER=I7 D1 H5 P330 T6
    mode con: rate=32 delay=1
    path=c:\;c:\system\batch;c:\utility\public;

    The BOLD lines are for the CDROM (or DVD, either works, and can have one of each)
    /d: switch assigns the device name. It must be the same in both CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT
    /l: switch assigns the first drive letter
    If you have two optical drives, the second will be the next letter.
    I normally have two so mine become R: and S:
    In fact I have a machine with three, and it has R: S: and T:

    SET BLASTER settings are for a very old Sound Blaster (bought it in 1994, still works)

    Be careful with setting drive letters to W X Y Z on old setups -- those were originally reserved network drives, and sometimes won't work elsewhere.

    The only reason this "didn't work" under Win9x is that the installer zeroed out the DOS config files, but you could go back and change them afterward and then it worked as expected.
  • pj_robinsonpj_robinson
    This is way old thread, I realise so maybe has dropped off everyone's radar, but...
    on an aside, I want a (virtual) MSDOS 6.22 machine with ideally disk 0 partitioned into C: (OS 15 MB) and D: ('basic office programs' 35 MB) and disk 1: partitioned into E:, F and G: (250MB apiece for programming software and projects) and, therefore, of course the CD drive as H:.
    What I'm finding, however, is that disk 0 partitioned into C: and E:, and disk 1 into D:, F: and G:
    I guess I could 'build' my VM storage piece by piece so that I FDISK my disk 0 BEFORE adding disk 1 and then FDISKing that , and then finally adding my CD drive. At the moment, I only have my basic OS on C: with no other software, so all isn't lost at the moment. But I have been racking my brains back 30+ years to when I was using MS-DOS before all that Windows malarkey, trying to think of a way to re-designate drive letters. SUBST, of course, wouldn't work as that would only confuse matters and tie everything into knots. I expect the MBR / BIOS and FDISK route are the way to go down to re-lettering the drives the way I want. But if anyone has any thoughts...?
  • SomeGuySomeGuy
    MS-DOS looks for partitions and arbitrarily assigns them drive letters in the order that it finds it when DOS first loads. You can NOT customize what hard drive drive letters are what.

    Windows 9x/ME had the same limitation. This was a massive headache. There were some crappy CD-ROMs that were hard coded to expect "D" that could NOT be made to work if the machine had a second hard drive.

    That said, perhaps there is some hack or workaround but I'm not aware of what it is. Perhaps making extra hard drive partitions not recognizable by DOS until some device drive is loaded? Seems like a bad idea. Perhaps make a small dummy "D" partition and find some way to force the CD driver to clobber the drive letter?

    The standard thing to do is just to set the CD drive to some higher drive letter and live with it.

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