can Linux re-letter my Windows partition?
 

Because the first partition on my new hard drive, a clone of the Windows partition on the old drive, was C:, the new partition I created (mostly because the Windows installation on the cloned partition was screwed up and I couldn't fix it) had to be called F. This is a trivial annoyance, but now that I have copied what I want from the cloned partition and deleted it, I want the new partition relabeled C, but Windows refuses (as I expected) to relabel it. Can I do that from Linux?
I suppose the drive's cloning software could probably clone this F partition onto a new C partition, but simply relettering F would be faster...

I wouldn't mess with the letter of the root partition. The thing is that this letter is all over your registry - if you simply rename the partition but the registry doesn't go with it, you'll end up with a system that totally freaks out because it can't find (parts of) itself anymore. This is pretty much why windows is refusing to have the letter changed. Maybe there is some windows specific software that can take care of it (although I doubt it) but Linux is powerless in this case; changing a letter is one thing, editing a windows registry at the same time is a completely different one.

Linux does not use "C" or "D" drive and so it can never do what you want. Operating systems respect each other territory and do not interfere with such thing at all.

However if you want "F" to boot up as a "C" you can do so by altering the boot disk order.

(1) Physically - just swap the electrical connection (when the PC is switched off) to reversed the "C" and "F" disks.

or

(2) Tell the Bios the first bootable hard disk is the one with "F" Windows partition inside.

or

(3) Use a Linux boot loader to hide the all Windows partitions leaving the first MS partition available for booting to be the one with "F" drive. You need to tell the Linux boot loader to swap the disk order on-the-fly between "C" and "F" disks. Either Lilo or Grub can do this sort of thing for you. Details in the last link of my signature.

JUst use any one from the above and you "F" will boot up as a "C" drive.

If "F" is your boot partition, you're probably not going to be able to relabel it (easily) without reinstalling windows. Your windows registry will refer to "F" all over the place - if you suddenly change it to "C" then you're going to break all those references and I doubt you'll even be able to boot.

I boot 3 Dos and 5 Windows and won't give a toss what the drive letter is. The technique is as described in Post #3.

You can clone a partition with "clonezilla", that cames in the "Gparted+Clonezilla" LiveCD.
But this has probably nothing to do with the windows drive letters.

In the newer windows versions (since windows 2000 and newer versions) you can change the drive letters in the "disk management" utility. In older versions it isn't possible.

No, not particularly, and my new hard drive has its own cloning software. Thank you, though.