Drive Letter Order

[bhzendner]

I need to create a new machine and map two vhd's I already have, when they boot the first time I need them to be c: and d:, how do I do that?

[BillG]

VirtualBox does not know about Windows drive letters, just as physical hardware knows nothing about them.

The first drive you add will probably be c: . If you want to be sure that the vm boots from a particular drive, add it and boot the vm. You can add the other drive later (and you can always change the drive letter from within Windows after you boot the vm).

[bhzendner]

That is a bummer, I have a database application and when it boots with the wrong letter for the second drive it corrupts the database so even when I change the drive letter in the drive manager it is to late the database is already corrupt. Anyone know a workaround?

[scottgus1]

Do an experiment. Try it with spare/backup/made-for-the-occasion VDI's and see which one comes up which letter.

In my three-disk SBS2003 VM: IDE Primary Master comes up C:, IDE Primary Slave is D:, IDE Secondary Master (the CD drive) is E: IDE Secondary Slave was F, I changed to X.

Also, you could boot in safe mode to prevent startup of the database, and check which drive got assigned which letter.

[bhzendner]

Sounds like a resonable test... so a testing I go...

[Raven]

If you're using NTFS, you can mount a volume into an empty directory. So make a new directory on C: and put your D: under it.

[squall leonhart]

once windows is installed, physical order does nothing as the partition letter is mapped to the volume guid.