Thanks for the reply, unforntunatly it didn't work, when the 'local drive' is
selected the only action available is 'delete partition'

One point I should add is that the original install on XP home was an
upgrade, since then my father has lost his original Win 98 disk so has bought
a full version of XP home to do the install. This wouldn't effect the
recognition or allocation of a drive letter since the OS will have a
different serial number? ( the data disc format is NTFS and he was running XP
SP2)

Thanks



"Andrew E." wrote:

> Try going to run,type:diskmgmt.msc In msc,L.click on the drive,then go to
> actions,all,select,make the drive active.Then reopen actions,select "change
> drive letter/path,change to listed letter,close out.
>
> "tallguy_uk_98" wrote:
>
> > My father has had a system disk crash but his data disk is fine, he has
> > obtained a new hard drive and installed windows XP home edition (SP2) - (he
> > was using XP home edition but don't know what SP). The bios and device
> > manager see the data drive but no drive letter is specified and the option to
> > give one is greyed out. he does not want to format the data drive as he has
> > no up to date back up. Disc management sees it as a 'local disk' he also cant
> > remember what the file system is
> >
> > How do I get the OS to give the drive a drive letter - any help is much
> > appreciated