Question(s) about 2 hard drives

[Lurker]

Recently upgraded WD 8 GB drive with a WD 80 GB drive. Wanted to have the
old one available
for files on it, etc. so configured master/slave for the two drives.

Old drive was partitioned into four drives (c,d,e,f) and I also partioned
new drive into 4 partitions.

Started up and installed (new) WindowsXP Home edition. Every thing worked
okay, but the drive
letters were not what I expected (or wanted). I was expecting the master
drive to be c,d,e,f and
the slave to be g,h,i,k.

Instead d was first partition of the slave drive, followed by e,f,g for the
master partitions, then the
remaining 3 partitions of the slave drive.

Tried for a few days and was very confusing, so I thought I would just
uncable the slave, set the
new drive jumper to it's default setting and I would have c,d,e,f.

WRONG! I still had the c,e,f,g (no d). So I used the WD software to
reformat, partition, etc and
started over. Now I have the desired c,d,e,f configuration on the new
drive.

Questions:
Did I do something wrong in the above sequence, and if so, what? (I did copy
all of my
relevant data files to CD's, so the old drive was more for convenience.)

Is there a correct way to configure the old drive so I can power it up again
without
getting the drive letters all screwy again?

If not, what drive letters would I get if I simply reformat the OLD drive
before hooking it up
in slave configuration? (so I could use it for backup purposes)

Thanks in advance,

Lurker

 

[Russell]

The thing is, Windows XP will, by default, create one primary partition and
one extended partition with extended logical drives per physical hard disk,
if you are creating more than one partition per hard drive. Primary
partitions receive priority when assigning original drive letters, and the
primary partition on the physical disc connected as primary master will have
the lowest drive letter, followed by the primary partition on the disc
connected as secondary master, then extended logical drives on the primary
master, the secondary master, etc, etc, etc.

If you want the master disc to have four partitions with drive letters C, D,
E, F and the slave disc to have G, H, I, and J, you can either change drive
letter assignments easily form within Windows, or you can use a third party
DOS boot disc with a more robust partitioning program, such as the "gdisk"
program that is included with Norton Ghost, which will allow you to create
one extended partition without requiring a primary partition on the slave
drive, then create logical drives within that extended partition.

I hope this makes sense,
Russell
http://tastycomputers.com

 

[the gnome]

The easiest way to do it, and I assume XP is similar to 2000, is to set the
Drives to Cable Select or CS in the jumpers on the Drives, then partition as
required ensuring that the computer boots from the disk you want it to, so
make sure that disk is on the cable at the last connector (the one on the
end).

Then as administrator in XP find the 'Computer Management/administration'
program and then chose the Disk Manager option, in there you can then select
the drive partition, highlight it and then change the letters to something
else.

I have C as the Boot Drive (traditional), G for the Games Disk, M for Music
and Data, P for Programs and V for Video Capture.

The CD and DVD are X and Z and the floppy is A: and the High Density Floppy
is B:


I have a friend with a 2 computer network and their Drives are set so that
each machine has the same Letter so if someone saves a file on Drive G, it
always saves in the same place.

If I have the wrong utility names for the XP system, I am sure someone will
correct me.

The_gnome