Disable secondary floppy letter?

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zawmoo · #1 Post by **zawmoo** » Tue Jul 04, 2006 2:24 am

Hi,

I have A: and B: as the floppy drive on my laptop while only having one physical drive. How do I get rid of one on 600X? I know on my desktops, I can disable B: in the BIOS. On my laptop, I don't know how to do that.

I'm running Windows 2000 Professional with factory BIOS version IT45WW (or something dated 1999).

Thanks.

#2 Post by **pkiff** » Tue Jul 04, 2006 10:48 am

I think this is by design, and it is built into Windows 2000. I don't think you can disable one in your BIOS, though you may be able to modify Windows 2000 to disable one through the standard method of disabling devices through Device Manager -> Floppy -> Properties -> Disable under this hardware profile.

See the following IBM/Lenovo info page for some additional information:
Why is floppy drive sometimes A: and sometimes B: under Windows 2000? - ThinkPad General

Phil.

#3 Post by **AlphaKilo470** » Tue Jul 04, 2006 2:08 pm

Unless there is some way to program this, the external floppy drive (plugged either into the side of the computer or the port replicator) is recognized as drive A and if there is a floppy in the UltraBay, that is recognized as drive B. I'm guessing IBM did this so you could use two floppy drives at once.

zawmoo · #4 Post by **zawmoo** » Tue Jul 04, 2006 5:55 pm

I realize having 2 floppy drive letters is normal. But, I think when I first got it or when I was running XP, I kind of remember having only 1 floppy drive letter, which is A:. I'm not 100% sure. That's why I'm thinking, may be I did something.

Disabling one drive in Windows 2000 doesn't work. Anyways, I think I'll leave this be.

Thanks for everybody's help.

dsigma6 · #5 Post by **dsigma6** » Tue Jul 04, 2006 7:19 pm

this bothers me too but i guess not enough to try and fix it. i dont even have a floppy in the ultrabay and it shows the A drive in my computer..

whatcha gonna do!

#6 Post by **pkiff** » Tue Jul 04, 2006 7:50 pm

zawmoo wrote:I realize having 2 floppy drive letters is normal. But, I think when I first got it or when I was running XP, I kind of remember having only 1 floppy drive letter, which is A:. I'm not 100% sure. That's why I'm thinking, may be I did something.

I'm pretty sure that having 2 drive letters is only normal in Windows 2000. Under XP I think this behaviour was changed, and that's why you didn't see it. I only see one floppy on my 600X's under XP SP2. And under Windoze 95/98/98SE, a 600/770 series machine will also show only a single A: drive unless you actually have two drives attached.

Phil.

smugiri · #7 Post by **smugiri** » Tue Jul 04, 2006 10:23 pm

I use linux and have been away from Windows for a while so I not sure about the exact sequence here . . .

Control Panel -> computer Management -> Disk Storage Management or something about managing disks, not sure what the exact title is.

Right click over the drive that you want to remove [b:] at the left hand side of the window to the right (where it shows the drive letter and icon as well as the volume label) and choose "Change drive letter" option.

When the window comes up, pick Remove.

Close out all windows (and maybe reboot for the changes to take effect).

Disable secondary floppy letter?

Disable secondary floppy letter?

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