Maybe I'm missing something obvious here, but on
my Win2k system I can
 mount any partition I want on any (NTFS) directory, just like you can
 mount filesystems on directories in Unix. So just make your C: drive
 NTFS, mount the other partitions, and forget about the C: if you want
 Unix-style paths. 
This is exactly what I did here, but later I was forced to dismount the CD-ROM unit and
the burner, because Nero 5.5 was not compatible with mounted devices.