change drive letters during xp install

[corkscrew22]

I've just upgraded my Abit an7 board with a new primary ide HDD, new cpu and memory. During fresh xp install it is naming my existing SATA drive as c and the new ide drive where xp is being installed as G. I want the new drive to be C how do i do this, my new rig is as folows,

AMD Athlon "Barton XP XP3200+ 400MHz FSB
Abit AN7 nForce2 latest Bios
2 x 512MB Crucial DDR (PC3200 CAS 3)

Primary IDE Maxtor Diamond/Max 10 200GB ATA/133 7200 rpm
Secondary IDE Maxtor 80 GB Ultra ATA/133

Serial ATA Maxtor DiamondMax Plus9 Serial ATA 160GB

AGP ATI Radeon 9550 256 MB
LiteOn SHW-1635s02c 16x DVD+/-R/+/- RW Drive
LG DVD combo drive

[rave]

right click My Computer --> Manage--> Disk Manager(under the drop down menu)-->right click the drive that says "G:" and select "Change Drive Letter and Paths"--> select change--> then select "C:"

[corkscrew22]

Dont think it allows you to do that on drive that contains op system

[rave]

Before you modify drive-letter assignments, note the following items:
• Changing the drive letter of the system volume or the boot volume is not a built-in feature of the Disk Management snap-in.

ah.sorry. forgot this

found this link...but it looks risky
* i do not take responsibility for this. dont know what it will do to your program associations and such*

http://www.petri.co.il/change_system_drive_letter_in_windows_xp.htm

*edit: straight form the devils mouth: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q223188/#appliesto *

[corkscrew22]

yes might give it a try, i hav'nt installed anything yet other than win xp pro and m/b drivers. I'm also wondering if I need to f6 and install sata drivers when installing xp since i believe the bios now has native support for sata.

[glc]

Disconnect all hard drives except the one you want to install XP on. Then when the install is complete, you can reconnect the old drives. Make sure you have all external USB drives and card readers disconnected too.

[corkscrew22]

Disconnecting the drives sounds like the way to go, in which case would I f6 to load the sata drivers so once xp is installed, it will recognise the sata drive when I reconnect it? (i'll be installing onto the primary IDE)

[glc]

No, all you need to do is install the SATA drivers from the CD once you have Windows installed on the IDE drive. You need to install the chipset drivers and the drivers for the onboard components anyway, just add that to the list. Make sure you take the SATA drive out of the boot sequence so it won't try to boot to it.