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Computer Gurus: Did I Mess Up With My PC Build?

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player

New Member
A number of years ago I put together an i7 with 32 gigs of ram, a SSD for C (that hosts Windows and programs) and a 2 TB data drive (which I designated as B drive) with Win7 Pro OS.

Recently my buddy was telling me he felt I had made an error when I set up the data drive, and that it may be causing me issues. What I did was I called the data drive B Data. So it is B. He said that Windows (I have Win7 Pro) reserves A and B for floppy drives and should not be used as a hard disk. I know how I can rename the drive to D or E or Z but I also use this computer to record music, and I have a ton of programs and files that may or may not be a problem if I change the drive letter. I would have to map the programs' data to the new drive. (Virtual instruments, sound files, graphics files etc. etc.). I would rather just keep things the way they are. The only thing I could find about the B drive issue is Windows may not index the A and B drives. I am not sure if not indexing applies as the disk management it does give me the option to index the B drive (although I cannot be sure it will index it if I ask it to... ). That being said I think I turned indexing off on everything because I hate when I am doing something and windows starts indexing the drive when I am working.

So my questions are (if someone who knows would be so kind to help me here):

- Do I have issues because the drive is B?
-Am I missing out not indexing, and does this B drive not have indexing?
-Should I change the drive letter to D or E because of errors I may not be aware of?

Note: I am planning to clone the B drive to change it out from a 2 TB drive to a 5 TB drive, which is why I am addressing this now.

Any help or suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks
 
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SignMeUpGraphics

Super Active Member
You'll break a lot of stuff moving it to another drive letter.
I turn off indexing on nearly every PC I build. It's clunky and doesn't always work.
I use something from VoidTools called "Everything" for searching my machines. It can't search content within files, but I can't remember the last time I need to do that either.
Personally, I wouldn't touch it unless *you* notice a problem.
 
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ikarasu

Active Member
A tldr; you're fine with it being B. It doesn't make a difference - and if you change it, you're setting yourself up to a lot of problems if there's any applications / data stored on it that's being refferenced in windows.



What versions of Windows are you using? I believe only the really, really old ones did not allow indexing on a and b. Floppys are a thing of the past...and windows doesn't assign A and B still for backwards compatibility. I believe all newer versions of Windows allows indexing though.

If you didn't notice anything bad in the past 5 years, don't fix what's not broken!

Indexing is great for certain things. Windows doesn't (or at least didn't used too, not sure if that changed over the years) index the whole hard drive. It's always indexed locations you frequently used. Indexing the whole hard drive, especially with how big they are now would slow down performance a lot.

Are you missing out on not using it? How often do you search your B drive for a file? You'd likely save somewhere from 10-20 seconds per search. It's not a big deal... But I'm 90% sure the B drive can be indexed in newer versions of Windows.
 
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player

New Member
ikarasu said:
A tldr; you're fine with it being B. It doesn't make a difference - and if you change it, you're setting yourself up to a lot of problems if there's any applications / data stored on it that's being refferenced in windows.



What versions of Windows are you using? I believe only the really, really old ones did not allow indexing on a and b. Floppys are a thing of the past...and windows doesn't assign A and B still for backwards compatibility. I believe all newer versions of Windows allows indexing though.

If you didn't notice anything bad in the past 5 years, don't fix what's not broken!

Indexing is great for certain things. Windows doesn't (or at least didn't used too, not sure if that changed over the years) index the whole hard drive. It's always indexed locations you frequently used. Indexing the whole hard drive, especially with how big they are now would slow down performance a lot.

Are you missing out on not using it? How often do you search your B drive for a file? You'd likely save somewhere from 10-20 seconds per search. It's not a big deal... But I'm 90% sure the B drive can be indexed in newer versions of Windows.
Click to expand...
I am using Windows 7 Pro.

I am not concerned about indexing. I agree I would rather not move the letter and open up that world of hurt.
 
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SignMeUpGraphics

Super Active Member
If you really want to use a different letter (but maintain the B: designation) you could use the SUBST command line.
Indexing would see around this though, as it's probably bases on the GUID of the partition and not the visible drive letter.
 
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ikarasu

Active Member
You should be fine then. Windows doesn't care about drive letters. In a system I built at home I have so many drives there are no letters available. I had a couple drives that had to be assigned folders on other drives and that didn't cause a problem.

It'd be different if you were using say windows 95... But even then it wouldn't matter much.

That being said... There is an easy fix. You could change the drive letter to whatever you want - and then tell windows to also assign it as drive b. Then slowly start using D:/ for everything, and anything that tries to use drive b will also work.

Can a single volume be assigned multiple drive letters?

[Edit] got beaten to the post!
 
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player

New Member
If there is no issue, then I won't get into drive letter trickery that is over my pay grade. I was concerned because of what my friend said, but you guys have helped allay those fears. Thanks.
 
WildWestDesigns

WildWestDesigns

Active Member
player said:
If there is no issue, then I won't get into drive letter trickery that is over my pay grade. I was concerned because of what my friend said, but you guys have helped allay those fears. Thanks.
Click to expand...

As others have mentioned, it doesn't matter any more. If this was a 9x version, then it would already have been taken up (at least A: even if it wasn't physically there). I actually run my scratch disc on Win 7 Pro as A: for my main VM.
 

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Oroscoe

New Member
Get a 2TB NAS (network attached storage). Transfer all your data files to it. This will allow you to remove your internal data drive and potentially fix any problem you feel that it may have or currently be having. Adding the NAS will also help you grow. As you continue to grow and add computers, you can share the NAS data with all or specific computers on your internal network. We currently have 14 systems on our network and the NAS has worked flawlessly.
 
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