Adding second HD (Basic Drive order)

[Den]

I have always added a second HD on the Primary lead
as drive 1/drive 2 which results in following order ie. two HD's
with two partitions;
Drive 1 HD No.1 C:\
Drive 2 HD No.2 D:\
Drive 1 HD No.1 E:\
Drive 2 HD No.2 F:\
Will the same order result if I put HD No.2 on the Secondary IDE with
a separate cable on it's own as Master or Slave. Like this order;
Drive 1 HD No.1 C:\
Drive 1 HD No.1 D:\
Drive 2 HD No.2 E:\
Drive 2 HD No.2 F:\

Sorry if this is too basic but cannot find it on google and I want to add
a CD-RW and CD-ROM.

Den

 

[Rod Speed]

I have always added a second HD on the Primary
lead as drive 1/drive 2 which results in following
order ie. two HD's with two partitions;
Drive 1 HD No.1 C:\
Drive 2 HD No.2 D:\
Drive 1 HD No.1 E:\
Drive 2 HD No.2 F:\

Which likely means you are running one of the Win9x family,
not NT/2K/XP. That makes a significant difference with lettering.

Will the same order result if I put HD No.2 on the Secondary IDE
with a separate cable on it's own as Master or Slave. Like this order;
Drive 1 HD No.1 C:\
Drive 1 HD No.1 D:\
Drive 2 HD No.2 E:\
Drive 2 HD No.2 F:\

Nope, with the Win9x family the ribbon cable the drive is on
is completely irrelevant with the first two entrys particularly.

The Win9x/ME family allocates letters to primary DOS
partitions first, then to logical drives within extended dos
partitions next, and logical drives within extended dos
partitions on the boot drive before those on the second drive.

Sorry if this is too basic but cannot find it on google
and I want to add a CD-RW and CD-ROM.

With the Win9x/ME family of OSs, those CD drives will
get letters after the partitions on the hard drives and that is
completely independant of which ribbon cable each drive is on.

 

[Den]

Which likely means you are running one of the Win9x family,
not NT/2K/XP. That makes a significant difference with lettering.


Nope, with the Win9x family the ribbon cable the drive is on
is completely irrelevant with the first two entrys particularly.

The Win9x/ME family allocates letters to primary DOS
partitions first, then to logical drives within extended dos
partitions next, and logical drives within extended dos
partitions on the boot drive before those on the second drive.


With the Win9x/ME family of OSs, those CD drives will
get letters after the partitions on the hard drives and that is
completely independant of which ribbon cable each drive is on.

A superb answer thanks, I will keep a copy of this for future reference.

Just two further points, if I dual boot with W98SE and XP I assume from
what you have already stated that this will still apply even if I use Fat32 with XP.

I also want to add Linux which will use its own HD partition (I do like the
Linux boot options as to what OS to boot) I take it that it will be best to
avoid trying to transfer files between the OS's in view of the different
drive orders.

PS
I made the mistake a few years ago on a W95/98 multi drive PC and
formatted the wrong drive. :-(

Den

 

[Rod Speed]

A superb answer thanks, I will keep a copy of this for future reference.

Just two further points, if I dual boot with W98SE
and XP I assume from what you have already stated
that this will still apply even if I use Fat32 with XP.

Only when booting Win98SE. XP does the allocation
of letters differently and thats completely independant
of how the partitions are formatted, its an OS feature,
not a dependant on the partition formatting used.

I also want to add Linux which will use its own HD partition

You normally use more than one for Linux.

(I do like the Linux boot options as to what OS to boot)
I take it that it will be best to avoid trying to transfer files
between the OS's in view of the different drive orders.

Transferring files isnt a problem, the problem is with
applications and where they are installed. If they arent
installed on the boot partition for the particular OS they
are used from, varying drive lettering can be a real problem.

There are a couple of obvious ways to stop the letters varying.

One is to ensure that there is only ever a single primary
dos partition in the complete collection of drives, the
lettering of the hard drive partitions wont change with
the crudest of the OSs in that regard, Win98x, if you
deliberately fix the optical drive letters to much higher
letters will ever be used for hard drive partitions.

If you use a full horsepower boot manager, you can hide
partitions visible to particular OS boots too, so you have
quite a bit of power there letter wise when combined
with quite a bit of control over how hard drive partitions
are lettered with the NT/2K/XP family and with Linux
doing the entire approach quite differently again.

PS
I made the mistake a few years ago on a W95/98
multi drive PC and formatted the wrong drive. :-(

Yeah, I've never actually done it, I always very carefully
check which drive I am formatting when formatting.
I did get one heart stopping moment when the dos
format reported the wrong capacity for the partition
being formatted due to a dos bug and I wondered for
a moment just which partition it was actually formatting.

With hard drives now so cheap, I normally have
everything completely imaged and when installing
a new OS usually do a few images very early on
in the install, just so its effortless to step back if
you change your mind about the detail on how you
are installing the extras like drivers and apps etc.
Then you just have to be careful not to format
the drive used for the images, and thats not hard
since its normally only ever formatted when new.

 

[Richard Alexander]

I have always added a second HD on the Primary lead
as drive 1/drive 2 which results in following order ie. two HD's
with two partitions;
Drive 1 HD No.1 C:\
Drive 2 HD No.2 D:\
Drive 1 HD No.1 E:\
Drive 2 HD No.2 F:\
Will the same order result if I put HD No.2 on the Secondary IDE with
a separate cable on it's own as Master or Slave. Like this order;
Drive 1 HD No.1 C:\
Drive 1 HD No.1 D:\
Drive 2 HD No.2 E:\
Drive 2 HD No.2 F:\

Sorry if this is too basic but cannot find it on google and I want to add
a CD-RW and CD-ROM.

I read through the thread containing your discussion with Rod Speed. I
have to wonder what his reaction would be if I offered a program that
can re-assign your hard drive letters?

"Everybody, who at least once connected a second hard disk drive or
repartitioned a hard disk, knows how many problems may arise because
of the non-customizable letter assignment performed by the operating
system.

"Letter Assigner allows to assign any letter to any drive in the
system (with a few non-significant exceptions). It gives the users of
Microsoft ® Windows ® 95, Windows ® 98 and Windows ® ME the freedom to
choose drive letters.

"Letter Assigner remembers drives by their serial numbers or by the
labels, which provides protection against letter changes after
repartitioning or connecting new drives. It also prevents non-bootable
situations that may occur when Windows® directory is located on a
drive other than C, and the drive changes its letter. (It contains
special mechanism for this purpose, including automatic correction of
the files "msdos.sys", "winboot.ini", "config.sys").

http://www.v72735.f2s.com/LetAssig/

I've never used the Letter Assign utility, but I once thought I needed
it, so I have a copy.

Far more useful to me (though this is off-topic) is my copy of Rename,
which allows me to batch rename my files (not that I'm suggesting that
the MS Windows file system is in any way deficient...).

http://www.1-4a.com/rename/

 

[Den]

Many thanks Rod for your detailed information.

Den

 

[Den]

I read through the thread containing your discussion with Rod Speed. I
have to wonder what his reaction would be if I offered a program that
can re-assign your hard drive letters?

"Everybody, who at least once connected a second hard disk drive or
repartitioned a hard disk, knows how many problems may arise because
of the non-customizable letter assignment performed by the operating
system.

"Letter Assigner allows to assign any letter to any drive in the
system (with a few non-significant exceptions). It gives the users of
Microsoft ® Windows ® 95, Windows ® 98 and Windows ® ME the freedom to
choose drive letters.

"Letter Assigner remembers drives by their serial numbers or by the
labels, which provides protection against letter changes after
repartitioning or connecting new drives. It also prevents non-bootable
situations that may occur when Windows® directory is located on a
drive other than C, and the drive changes its letter. (It contains
special mechanism for this purpose, including automatic correction of
the files "msdos.sys", "winboot.ini", "config.sys").

http://www.v72735.f2s.com/LetAssig/

I've never used the Letter Assign utility, but I once thought I needed
it, so I have a copy.

Far more useful to me (though this is off-topic) is my copy of Rename,
which allows me to batch rename my files (not that I'm suggesting that
the MS Windows file system is in any way deficient...).

http://www.1-4a.com/rename/

Thanks I will look into this when I have the chance, but
as I have several PC's I have decided to rather than Tri-boot
to have a couple of Dual-boots for transfer of files via network.
Though the "LetAssig" looks good for a W98SE/Linux Dual-boot
and as far as the Renaming program is concerned this could have
saved me lots of time in the past, and even now when transferring
long named files to CD.

Den