Talk:Drive letter assignment

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Not really competent to comment, but on RSX-11 and VMS we had the extremely clean concept of devices, which could be either physical or logical, and easily controlled through software assignment.

On RSX they had two-letter names with numbers and a colon. I believe on VMS they could be anything.

Hence, if you sent output to TI:, it appeared on your terminal, LP: to the default printer, NL: to the bit bucket, DB2:, whatever disk had that name, TT32:, that particular terminal, etc, etc. Again, on RSX, all activity was controlled by PIP, the Peripheral Interchange Program, so moving files, deleting them, renaming them, printing them, copying them, saving them, was all the same. Programs ("tasks") could do the same. Ortolan88

Contents 1 Other OS? 2 History? 3 After Z:? 4 Recognized → recognised

[edit] Other OS?

What about other OSs that use drive letters? RiscOS? Macs?

Macs, as far as I know, always use the disc's label to refer to it - which has a default like "Macintosh 5020". Remember that until Mac OS X (which is UNIX), there was rarely need to refer to the location of a file in this way, so the verbosity wasn't a problem. RiscOS, on the other hand, I'm not so sure about - Acorns certainly had short disk identifiers of some sort, but I'm not at all sure they weren't numbers rather than letters... - IMSoP 22:40, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

RISC OS used numbers and a filing system identifier. For instance, floppy disk drives were controlled by the advanced disc filing system (ADFS) so the first floppy drive was ADFS::0, the second ADFS::1. The root of each FS was $, the directory seperator was . so a typical path was ADFS::0.$.letters.matt (no file extensions). The first IDE drive was ADFS::4, the second ADFS::5 and so on, SCSI drives were SCSI::0 etc. There was also ResourcesFS, from which you could access the files stored in ROM, I can't remember how that was labelled. IIRC there were some pseudo-FSs too. M Blissett 13:11, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

MacOS (at least prior to X) does have device names. But they are only needed for blood & guts programming. The average user is never confronted with them. —Brian Patrie 13:15, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] History?

I'd like to know why they chose to assign drive letters the way they did. Why not make the primary partition A, followed by subsequent partitions and then start assigning removeable devices?

Because floppy drives came first and hard drives were invented later. Early PCs had one or two floppy drives so a: and b: were assigned to those. When hard drives came along, the a: and b: assignments couldn't be changed so the hard drives started at c:

[edit] After Z:?

What does Windows call drives beyond Z:? I've wondered about this. Unfortunately, no one yet has provided me with an answer. —Typhlosion 19:14, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

I always wondered that too, 26 harddrives is the norm in large organisations i would of thought. —allix , 13:07 3 August 2006 (GMT)

Microsoft TechNet says 'You can create more than 26 volumes with Windows, but you cannot assign more than 26 drive letters for accessing these volumes. ... Volumes created after the 26th drive letter has been used must be accessed using volume mount points'. Like to add this to the article? PeterGrecian 12:48, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

I've added it now. PeterGrecian 18:31, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

After Z:? Maybe numbers? I don't know (If you ask why number, it's just I got it somewhere in a wacky error message {saying that "8:" isn't valid}). AppleMacReporter 01:49, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Recognized → recognised

I note an edit today changing recognized to recognised in this article. Basically, you should have left this spelling in place. See [Manual of Style, on style disputes]:

...it is inappropriate for a Wikipedia editor to change from one style to another unless there is some substantial reason for the change. For example, with respect to British spelling as opposed to American spelling, it would only be acceptable to change from American spelling to British spelling if the article concerned a British topic. Revert warring over optional styles is unacceptable; if the article uses colour rather than color, it would be wrong to switch simply to change styles, although editors should ensure that articles are internally consistent. If in doubt, defer to the style used by the first major contributor.

Not a big deal, but the goals are internal consistency, and following the style of the original contributor. Not to mention that CP/CMS, CP/M, and Microsoft products all have US origins. I have not reverted the spelling, but future edits should seek consistency here. Trevor Hanson 19:12, 22 November 2006 (UTC)