4 ms·

I remember when A and B were commonly used drive letters. C was a luxury. D was outright bourgeois. But for some reason, drive letters starting with C feel com

by kijin 11mo ago

I remember when A and B were commonly used drive letters. C was a luxury. D was outright bourgeois. But for some reason, drive letters starting with C feel completely natural, too. Maybe it's because C is also the first note in the most widely known musical scale. We can totally afford to waste two drive letters at the start, right?

urbandw311er 11mo ago
Oh bless you and your youngsterness. A and B, by convention, were reserved for floppy drives and C was typically the first hard drive.
- HPsquared 11mo ago
  Hard drives were a luxury.
  - prerok 11mo ago
    While original IBM PCs indeed may not have had HDDs, it did become a standard for PC XT, as early as 1983. Only the cheapest version were without a HDD by the end of the 1980s.
    - actionfromafar 11mo ago
      Many clones came without a HDD.
      - prerok 11mo ago
        Sure, I can imagine that. My first contact with PCs was in 1988 and they all had HDDs and were definitely not "IBM PC" but clones. That said, that's just my experience so YMMV.
        pdonis 11mo ago
        My first PC, bought in late 1986, was a Leading Edge Model D, with two 360K floppy drives and no hard drive. I wrote a script to put COMMAND.COM and some other key files on a RAM disk on boot so I didn't have to keep the DOS floppy in the A: drive all the time. IIRC they had come out with a model that had a 20 MB hard drive but it was more than I could afford. MIT, where I was at school then, had some IBM PC XTs with 10 MB hard drives, but most of their computer resources were time-sharing DEC VAX machines. You could go to one of several computer labs to get on a terminal, or even dial into them--I did the latter from my PC (the one above) using a 2400 baud modem, which was fast for the time.
        jasomill 11mo ago
        Reminds me of a silly thing that happened when I was a freshman in high school, ca. 1992. We had a dumb "computer literacy" class taught in an computer lab full of PS/2 Model 25s with no hard drives, and were each issued a bootable floppy disk containing both Microsoft Works and our assignment files (word processing documents, spreadsheets, etc.), which we turned in at the end of class for grading. We started Works in the usual way, by typing "works" at the MS-DOS prompt. One day, out of boredom, I added "PROMPT Password:" to AUTOEXEC.BAT on my disk, changing the DOS prompt from "A:\>" to "Password:" when booted from my disk. Two days later, I got called into the dean's office, where the instructor demanded to know how I used my disk to "hack the network" — a network that, up until this point, I didn't even know existed, as the lab computers weren't connected to anything but power — and "lock me out of my computer", and threatened suspension unless and until I revealed the password. After a few minutes trying to explain that no password existed to a "computer literacy" instructor who clearly had no idea what either AUTOEXEC.BAT or the DOS prompt was, nor why booting a networked computer from a potentially untrustworthy floppy disk was a terrible idea, I finally gave in. "Fine. The password is works. Can I go now?"
        tracker1 11mo ago
        Those 10mb full-height mfm drives were so slow... you could literally turn the computer on... go make yourself something to drink, finish your first cup, pour a second and you'd be getting the to DOS prompt right around the time it finished booting. The irony, it was actually faster doublespaced/stacked.
    - layer8 11mo ago
      By the end of the 1980s, a lot of years had passed, and you’d buy an AT instead of an XT.
- keitmo 11mo ago
  On systems with a single floppy, drives A: and B: were two logical drives mapped to the same physical drive. This enabled you to (tediously) copy files from one diskette to another.
  - dmurray 11mo ago
    I don't recall this, and I do recall running something like "diskcopy A: A:" to do that operation.
    - pxx 11mo ago
      phantom drive B is explicitly mentioned in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive_letter_assignment#Order_of_assignment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive_letter_assignment#Order_... the linked source checks out. diskcopy will also do this for you if you give it source = dest.
- nopechief 11mo ago
  [dead]
euroderf 11mo ago
D was typically a CD-ROM drive. So when CD-ROMs went the way of the dinosaurs, where did D go ? Is it always some kind of SYS drive nowadays ?
- tetha 11mo ago
  On servers, D is commonly used to push data / vendor installations / other stuff you may want to backup separate from the OS off of the main OS drive C.
- kijin 11mo ago
  D usually refers to the second internal storage device these days. Either a second SSD, a large HDD, or an extra partition in your system disk. If you don't have any of those, a USB stick might get the D drive temporarily.
- tom_ 11mo ago
  It's just whatever happens to end up there? That's why D was typically the CD-ROM: A was the first floppy drive, B the (typically absent) second floppy drive, C the only hard disk, and then D was the next free letter. On my laptop, D is the SD card slot. On my desktop, it's the 2nd SSD.
  - hilbert42 11mo ago
    "That's why D was typically the CD-ROM:" We used to set our machines so the CD-ROM was always drive L. This way we always had 'room' to add HDs so there was no gap in the alphabetical sequence. Drive D - data drive, E - swapfile, etc. Test and external drives (being temporary) were assigned letters further down than L. Sticking reasonably rigidly to this nomenclature avoided stuff-up such as cloning an empty drive onto one with data on it (cloning was a frequent activity). Incidentally, this rule applied to all machines, a laptop with HD would have C drive and L as the CD-ROM. Machines with multiple CD-ROMs would be assigned L, M and so on.
    - NetMageSCW 11mo ago
      I always used J: (I didn’t expect to need to add that many hard drives). I mainly did it so that CD installs wouldn’t lose their install drive since even Windows tracked it by the absolute path. Not as important with everything installed by download and Windows copying the install media to the hard drive anyway.
skissane 11mo ago
> I remember when A and B were commonly used drive letters. C was a luxury. D was outright bourgeois. Our first home computer (1989 or 1990?) was a 386SX with a 40MB hard disk (so maybe we were bourgeois). My dad had to partition it into a 32MB C drive and an 8MB D drive, because the DOS version (3.3?) had a 32MB maximum filesystem size. It had two separate 5.25 inch floppy drives, a 1.2MB and a 360KB - although the 1.2MB drives could read 360KB disks, they couldn’t write them in a form readable by 360KB drives, or something like that. And later (circa 1991) we got a 3.5 inch floppy drive too, which became drive A, the 1.2MB became drive B, and the 360KB was relegated to drive E. The FDC that came with the computer (back then they were ISA cards, hadn’t been integrated with the motherboard yet) only supported two drives, so he had to buy a new one that supported four.
lepicz 11mo ago
'We have D at home' :) c:\> subst d: c:

by kijin 11mo ago

urbandw311er 11mo ago

Oh bless you and your youngsterness. A and B, by convention, were reserved for floppy drives and C was typically the first hard drive.

HPsquared 11mo ago
Hard drives were a luxury.
- prerok 11mo ago
  While original IBM PCs indeed may not have had HDDs, it did become a standard for PC XT, as early as 1983. Only the cheapest version were without a HDD by the end of the 1980s.
  - actionfromafar 11mo ago
    Many clones came without a HDD.
    - prerok 11mo ago
      Sure, I can imagine that. My first contact with PCs was in 1988 and they all had HDDs and were definitely not "IBM PC" but clones. That said, that's just my experience so YMMV.
      - pdonis 11mo ago
        My first PC, bought in late 1986, was a Leading Edge Model D, with two 360K floppy drives and no hard drive. I wrote a script to put COMMAND.COM and some other key files on a RAM disk on boot so I didn't have to keep the DOS floppy in the A: drive all the time. IIRC they had come out with a model that had a 20 MB hard drive but it was more than I could afford. MIT, where I was at school then, had some IBM PC XTs with 10 MB hard drives, but most of their computer resources were time-sharing DEC VAX machines. You could go to one of several computer labs to get on a terminal, or even dial into them--I did the latter from my PC (the one above) using a 2400 baud modem, which was fast for the time.
        jasomill 11mo ago
        Reminds me of a silly thing that happened when I was a freshman in high school, ca. 1992. We had a dumb "computer literacy" class taught in an computer lab full of PS/2 Model 25s with no hard drives, and were each issued a bootable floppy disk containing both Microsoft Works and our assignment files (word processing documents, spreadsheets, etc.), which we turned in at the end of class for grading. We started Works in the usual way, by typing "works" at the MS-DOS prompt. One day, out of boredom, I added "PROMPT Password:" to AUTOEXEC.BAT on my disk, changing the DOS prompt from "A:\>" to "Password:" when booted from my disk. Two days later, I got called into the dean's office, where the instructor demanded to know how I used my disk to "hack the network" — a network that, up until this point, I didn't even know existed, as the lab computers weren't connected to anything but power — and "lock me out of my computer", and threatened suspension unless and until I revealed the password. After a few minutes trying to explain that no password existed to a "computer literacy" instructor who clearly had no idea what either AUTOEXEC.BAT or the DOS prompt was, nor why booting a networked computer from a potentially untrustworthy floppy disk was a terrible idea, I finally gave in. "Fine. The password is works. Can I go now?"
        tracker1 11mo ago
        Those 10mb full-height mfm drives were so slow... you could literally turn the computer on... go make yourself something to drink, finish your first cup, pour a second and you'd be getting the to DOS prompt right around the time it finished booting. The irony, it was actually faster doublespaced/stacked.
  - layer8 11mo ago
    By the end of the 1980s, a lot of years had passed, and you’d buy an AT instead of an XT.
keitmo 11mo ago
On systems with a single floppy, drives A: and B: were two logical drives mapped to the same physical drive. This enabled you to (tediously) copy files from one diskette to another.
- dmurray 11mo ago
  I don't recall this, and I do recall running something like "diskcopy A: A:" to do that operation.
  - pxx 11mo ago
    phantom drive B is explicitly mentioned in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive_letter_assignment#Order_of_assignment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive_letter_assignment#Order_... the linked source checks out. diskcopy will also do this for you if you give it source = dest.
nopechief 11mo ago
[dead]

euroderf 11mo ago

D was typically a CD-ROM drive. So when CD-ROMs went the way of the dinosaurs, where did D go ? Is it always some kind of SYS drive nowadays ?

tetha 11mo ago
On servers, D is commonly used to push data / vendor installations / other stuff you may want to backup separate from the OS off of the main OS drive C.
kijin 11mo ago
D usually refers to the second internal storage device these days. Either a second SSD, a large HDD, or an extra partition in your system disk. If you don't have any of those, a USB stick might get the D drive temporarily.
tom_ 11mo ago
It's just whatever happens to end up there? That's why D was typically the CD-ROM: A was the first floppy drive, B the (typically absent) second floppy drive, C the only hard disk, and then D was the next free letter. On my laptop, D is the SD card slot. On my desktop, it's the 2nd SSD.
- hilbert42 11mo ago
  "That's why D was typically the CD-ROM:" We used to set our machines so the CD-ROM was always drive L. This way we always had 'room' to add HDs so there was no gap in the alphabetical sequence. Drive D - data drive, E - swapfile, etc. Test and external drives (being temporary) were assigned letters further down than L. Sticking reasonably rigidly to this nomenclature avoided stuff-up such as cloning an empty drive onto one with data on it (cloning was a frequent activity). Incidentally, this rule applied to all machines, a laptop with HD would have C drive and L as the CD-ROM. Machines with multiple CD-ROMs would be assigned L, M and so on.
  - NetMageSCW 11mo ago
    I always used J: (I didn’t expect to need to add that many hard drives). I mainly did it so that CD installs wouldn’t lose their install drive since even Windows tracked it by the absolute path. Not as important with everything installed by download and Windows copying the install media to the hard drive anyway.

skissane 11mo ago

> I remember when A and B were commonly used drive letters. C was a luxury. D was outright bourgeois. Our first home computer (1989 or 1990?) was a 386SX with a 40MB hard disk (so maybe we were bourgeois). My dad had to partition it into a 32MB C drive and an 8MB D drive, because the DOS version (3.3?) had a 32MB maximum filesystem size. It had two separate 5.25 inch floppy drives, a 1.2MB and a 360KB - although the 1.2MB drives could read 360KB disks, they couldn’t write them in a form readable by 360KB drives, or something like that. And later (circa 1991) we got a 3.5 inch floppy drive too, which became drive A, the 1.2MB became drive B, and the 360KB was relegated to drive E. The FDC that came with the computer (back then they were ISA cards, hadn’t been integrated with the motherboard yet) only supported two drives, so he had to buy a new one that supported four.

lepicz 11mo ago

'We have D at home' :) c:\> subst d: c: