seeing drives in dual boot win 7/10

nitetripper · 05 Sep 2016

Thanks in advance for any thoughts,
I have a dualboot win 7/10 machine, each system is on it's own ssd, programs are in 2 different folders on a 3rd ssd,all is working fine except:
when i'm in 7 I can see the 10 drive which is labeled "E" but i cannot see 7 which is labeled "C" from 10. Is this because both drives are labeled as "C" when I am in the respective systems?
Can I safely change the letter for 7? I can see the 7 from 10 in disk management
Thanks

cereberus · 05 Sep 2016

nitetripper said:

Thanks in advance for any thoughts,
I have a dualboot win 7/10 machine, each system is on it's own ssd, programs are in 2 different folders on a 3rd ssd,all is working fine except:
when i'm in 7 I can see the 10 drive which is labeled "E" but i cannot see 7 which is labeled "C" from 10. Is this because both drives are labeled as "C" when I am in the respective systems?
Can I safely change the letter for 7? I can see the 7 from 10 in disk management
Thanks

When you dual boot, the OS you boot to is always assigned C:, and the other a different letter.

If you cannot see the drive with Windows 7 from Windows 10, it is a driver related issue. Check your SATA drivers from device management are up to date.

Fafhrd · 05 Sep 2016

In 10, right-click

Disk Management

You may need to assign a drive letter to the Windows 7 SSD.

Drive letters are purely assigned at installation time in the Registry of the OS you are running, unless you install the second dualboot OSsystem from within the first.

So say you install each OS from a booted DVD or USB they will each have C:\ Windows assignments for the boot drive. However if You install Windows 7 first, then install windows 10 on the second USB from Windows 7 it will take another drive letter, like E:\ , since C:\ is already used by Windows 7.