why does windows hdd/ssd start at c?

[adarw]

so why dont they start at a instead?

 

[svmlegacy]

Just now, adarw said:

so why dont they start at a instead?

 

Floppy drives were A: and B:

[RockSolid1106]

what

 

Umm I didnt quite get your question in the first read but the answer above did

Edited August 2, 2021 by RockSolid1106

[Levent]

1 minute ago, RockSolid1106 said:

what

It seems you never used Windows operating system in your life.

Windows will always start assigning letters starting from letter C, OP is asking why it is not starting from A.

[Murasaki]

Backwards compatibility reasons and stuff.

[RockSolid1106]

5 minutes ago, Levent said:

It seems you never used Windows operating system in your life.

Windows will always start assigning letters starting from letter C, OP is asking why it is not starting from A.

I would have understood if the OP had used A: and C: instead of just a and c, which confused me

 

Im dumb

[RejZoR]

5 minutes ago, svmlegacy said:

Floppy drives were A: and B:

Though that's a VERY legacy thing. I haven't had a floppy drive for last 17-18 years, basically when I started using USB drives to install Windows I stopped using floppy drives. Windows XP time I'd say (Windows 98 SE had floppy disk for some sort of authentication bootstrap). Haven't had optical drive in my system for last 8-10 years. Can't even remember exactly as it is so far back.

[Jtalk4456]

10 minutes ago, adarw said:

so why dont they start at a instead?

 

I could've sworn there was a techquickie episode about this though I can't seem to find it. above answers are accurate though. It's just how it's been for so long it and changing it wouldn't make anything work better

[svmlegacy]

11 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Though that's a VERY legacy thing. I haven't had a floppy drive for last 17-18 years, basically when I started using USB drives to install Windows I stopped using floppy drives. Windows XP time I'd say (Windows 98 SE had floppy disk for some sort of authentication bootstrap). Haven't had optical drive in my system for last 8-10 years. Can't even remember exactly as it is so far back.

But it is the reason. Now many programs are aware of the root HDD being at C:/ . If it ain't broke don't fix it.

[GoodBytes]

9 hours ago, adarw said:

so why dont they start at a instead?

 

There is no actual reason. The concept of drive letters is a DOS concept that got carried over to MS-DOS and then, Windows.

In the old days, computers didn't have an HDD's. Waaaayyy too expensive and too big. The way it worked is that you would have the OS (DOS based OS, such as MS-DOS), be on a floppy which the user needed to insert first before turning on the system. The system would read the floppy drive and start the OS. Being the first drive, it had the letter A:\. The floppy could now be removed (as the OS would be in RAM), and a software floppy could be inserted and loaded. Then this was annoying, and so for those who could afford it, systems with 2 floppy drives was a thing (also allowed floppy copying and allowing you to run a a large software that could not be fully loaded in RAM and allowed another disk to load/save your project being used by that software). So, A:\ and B:\ were floppy drives.

 

Later, HDD's became.... """"""affordable""""""

Spoiler

1981 ad:

g

 

That makes it $11,044.19 US for that 10MB model in today's money. Scalper price 3090 are now looking quite affordable sounding

 

 

As a system that would have this newfangled "HDD" technology drive would typically be in a fully loaded one with 2 floppy drives, it got the designation of C:\.

Then mix to simplify support, manuals, and so on, systems without a secondary floppy drive and only one HDD: the HDD would still be C:\

 

At the same time, more or less, OSs became fancier, doing a lot more things for the user, and making PCs easier to use than ever, needed to be installed on the HDD due to size increase (and also gain a notable speed increase, as HDD were much faster than floppies). So, by that time, Window defaulted itself to C:\. People knew that A:\ and B:\ were reserved for floppy drives, and C:\ was for the HDD.

 

So, in the end, there is no advantage in changing this. Better to be left as is (as it would cause more problems than help). And today, it is just a nice piece of computer history, and this makes an interesting conversation and highlight how far we have come.

[adarw]

44 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

There is no actual reason. The concept of drive letters is a DOS concept that got carried over to MS-DOS and then, Windows.

In the old days, computers didn't have an HDD's. Waaaayyy too expensive and too big. The way it worked is that you would have the OS (DOS based OS, such as MS-DOS), be on a floppy which the user needed to insert first before turning on the system. The system would read the floppy drive and start the OS. Being the first drive, it had the letter A:\. The floppy could now be removed (as the OS would be in RAM), and a software floppy could be inserted and loaded. Then this was annoying, and so for those who could afford it, systems with 2 floppy drives was a thing (also allowed floppy copying and allowing you to run a a large software that could not be fully loaded in RAM and allowed another disk to load/save your project being used by that software). So, A:\ and B:\ were floppy drives.

 

Later, HDD's became.... """"""affordable""""""

  Reveal hidden contents

1981 ad:

That makes it $11,044.19 US for that 10MB model in today's money. Scalper price 3090 are now looking quite affordable sounding

 

 

As a system that would have this newfangled "HDD" technology drive would typically be in a fully loaded one with 2 floppy drives, it got the designation of C:\.

Then mix to simplify support, manuals, and so on, systems without a secondary floppy drive and only one HDD: the HDD would still be C:\

 

At the same time, more or less, OSs became fancier, doing a lot more things for the user, and making PCs easier to use than ever, needed to be installed on the HDD due to size increase (and also gain a notable speed increase, as HDD were much faster than floppies). So, by that time, Window defaulted itself to C:\. People knew that A:\ and B:\ were reserved for floppy drives, and C:\ was for the HDD.

 

So, in the end, there is no advantage in changing this. Better to be left as is (as it would cause more problems than help), where it is, today, just a nice piece of computer history, and make an interesting conversation and highlight how far we have come.

very informative!  I never knew OSes were put on ram(perhaps we could do that with ddr5 and make super computers lol), and 11k for 10 mb harddrives WOW. thanks!

[GoodBytes]

9 minutes ago, adarw said:

very informative!  I never knew OSes were put on ram(perhaps we could do that with ddr5 and make super computers lol), and 11k for 10 mb harddrives WOW. thanks!

Well if you have 64GB of RAM, you could do this today. The problem is that back in DOS days and even early version of Windows, is that they were designed in mind that they could not store stuff on itself. You didn't have a registry, you didn't have system update delivered over the internet (let alone the internet). If you put everything in RAM today, changing OS settings would be gone when you reboot. You'll need a system to copy the data back and forth between disk and RAM, and transfering 64GB of data at startup isn't instant. Your top of the line RAID0 SSD read speed is way too slow to take less than a second.

 

The way forward would be SSDs being just as fast as RAM on small files when it reads them. Sadly, we are very far away from this.

[adarw]

1 hour ago, GoodBytes said:

Well if you have 64GB of RAM, you could do this today. The problem is that back in DOS days and even early version of Windows, is that they were designed in mind that they could not store stuff on itself. You didn't have a registry, you didn't have system update delivered over the internet (let alone the internet). If you put everything in RAM today, changing OS settings would be gone when you reboot. You'll need a system to copy the data back and forth between disk and RAM, and transfering 64GB of data at startup isn't instant. Your top of the line RAID0 SSD read speed is way too slow to take less than a second.

 

The way forward would be SSDs being just as fast as RAM on small files when it reads them. Sadly, we are very far away from this.

oh haha but if we never turned off the computer/server can we put the os on the ram.

[GoodBytes]

3 hours ago, adarw said:

oh haha but if we never turned off the computer/server can we put the os on the ram.

Grimm I guess...

Just remember all be gone once you lose power, and maybe restarts too. Not sure on that one.

[adarw]

2 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Grimm I guess...

Just remember all be gone once you lose power, and maybe restarts too. Not sure on that one.

haha lol

[m9x3mos]

Here was a great video I found about this a while back.