About Hard Drive Designation
When a computer has only one hard drive, it's standard to designate it as "Drive C." Drive A and Drive B are holdovers from the old days of floppy drives. It is when the user adds a second, third or more hard drives that the designation of the drives can become confusing.
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History
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Early home computers did not have a hard drive at all. Most were equipped with one or two floppy drives. These floppy disk drives, which were standard on all home computers until the late 1990s, were called Drive A and Drive B. Drive A generally held the program that was being used, while Drive B was where data was stored. With the introduction of hard drives, it was natural that the drive got the designation of Drive C. The operating system for the computer was stored on this drive, along with any programs and data. The floppy drive was then used mainly for backup of data files in the event of a hard-drive crash.
Function
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The operating system can handle drive designations from A to Z. In most cases, the A and B drive are obsolete. Drive C is the main hard drive that loads the operating system for the computer to work. Drive D is generally the CD or DVD drive of a computer. The remaining letters are given to second installed hard drives, external USB hard drives or other removable data storage. Depending on the system, multiple hard drives can be installed into the system using "raid" storage or other methods of stacking several additional hard drives. Each of the extra drives will take the next letter available to designate the drive letter.
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Effects
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Because the computer gives each drive its own letter designation, it is easy for the user to find and manipulate data stored on each individual drive. Each drive can be used to store a specific type of data. For example, Drive E could be for pictures, Drive F for music and Drive G for games or other multimedia.
Considerations
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Many users use a "ghosting" or other full-disk backup program to copy the entire C drive. In case of a main hard-drive crash, this ghosted drive can replace the C drive and allow the user to continue working with no operating system, program or data loss. In order to be effective, Drive C should be backed up anytime a new program is installed. Data back-up can be either to another hard drive or to a CD or DVD.
Misconceptions
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Most computer BIOS chips look to Drive C for the location of the installed computer operating system. If the operating system resides on a different drive, the user can set the BIOS boot sequence to look at a different drive to load the system. This is especially useful if running different operating systems, such as Linux or Windows, on separate drives.
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