darkwater a day ago

No, A: and B: were for floppies, when having 2 floppy readers was the norm.

But anyway ignoring the sarcasm my question was implying: if this is totally customizable in Windows, why Microsoft still ships C: (or whatever other letter) as the default name for the first user partition? Show it to legacy programs with hardcoded values to maintain compatibility, but at least in Explorer and MS controlled software, use some more modern/legible name.

Reply View 0 replies
dragonwriter 2 days ago

A: and B: were both for floppies, dual floppy systems were around and common, both with and without hard disks, long before Zip disks existed, and Zip disks came around far too late (1994!) to influence the MS-DOS naming standard.

Reply View 0 replies
otterley 2 days ago

Drive B was always a floppy disk drive.

Zip disks presented themselves with drive letters higher than B (usually D: assuming you had a single hard disk). However, some (all?) Zip drives could also accept legacy 3.5" floppies, and those would show up as B.

Reply View 2 replies
  • DiabloD3 2 days ago

    You're confused and you're thinking of the LS-120 SuperDisk. On some machines, it could be setup to appear as A: or B: when a 3.5" floppy was inserted.

    Zip drives were never compatible with 3.5" floppies, and always were enumerated using the first available external storage letter (ie, D: in typical machines).

    Reply View 1 reply