Drive lettering

[mhl]

I'm planning to replace 3 old HDDs with one new large capacity HDD. Because of the way I have O/S, apps, data installed currently on separate physical disks (C:, D:, and E), I intend to partition the new HDD to correspond to these. However, I would also like to take the opportunity to experiment with multiple boot (Win 2000 and Linux). I want to retain my CD/DVD drive as F: because a number of installed apps point there. Can I somehow force additional partitions (for Win 2000 and Linux) to pick up letters G: and H: or will one of them grab F: as the next logical drive and so screw up my apps which expect my CD/DVD to be there?

[readrj]

If you add the new drive to your existing drives then yes... they will adopt the next letter after the existing HD's and the CDRom will tag on the end. The only drive you can change the Letter to is the CDRom.

[Ridgerunr]

If you use Partition Magic, it has a drive mapping feature that will search for and rearrange any applications drive letter association. So you can choose the letter you want for your ROM drives and won't have to worry about apps not finding it/them...

[mhl]

Ridge - can you shed some light on PM's drive mapping feature and how it works? The FAQ on the PM website specifically says that apps and data can't be moved. I'd want to be sure that PM would be the right utility for me before shelling out $$ - I already have a perfectly good utility for the tedious job of ghosting the old HDDs to the new one.

[Ridgerunr]

It doesn't move any applications or programs. What the mapping does is if an app/program such as burning software associates itself with a drive letter such as D:, the mapping feature searches your system for anything such as this and re-associates them to the new drive letter. This includes what drive letter is seen by Device Manager>CD-ROM drives>settings tab. PM simply changes them to the proper letters...

There is a program called "drive letter assigner" from this site:
http://www.v72735.f2s.com/LetAssig/index.html
I've tried it and was not happy with how it "assigned" the letters. It refused to change the letter for an old partition to the proper partition and it was very confusing to say the least. It also puts a splash of it's name and programmer on the boot-up screen without your knowledge until you "see" it. But,,after all,,it is free.

For all they will do, and the ease they do it,Partition Magic and Drive Image was well worth the money for me. Good savings on these from the MSRP can be found here: http://www.dirtcheapsoftware.com/utilities.html

Whoops,,didn't notice 'til after i posted your across the pond. But shop around your fav hangouts for software and you should find a much better price than the Mfr's retail one...

[Nix]

Drive letter are named as follows:

First Primary Partition on HD0
First Primary Partition on each subsequent HD
Logical Drives in Extended Partition on HD0
Logical Drives in Extended Partition on each subsequent HD
Remaining Primary Partitions on HD0
Remianing Primary Partitiond on each subsequent HD
CD Drives

[mhl]

Ridge - I'm interested in the potential of PM's drive mapping facility to solve my drive lettering dilemma, but the cheapest I've been able to find it on this side of the pond is £39.99 - around $60 in your money (that's around $15 off normal retail price over here). Looks pretty expensive against the $21.95 which I can find on the Web for a buyer in the US

Thanks for your tip all the same.

[DrMDJ]

Some minor adjustments to Nix's post...

1) The active Primary partition on the boot HD.
2) Any active Primary partition on subsequent HDs. Assignment starts with the master on the 1st motherboard controller, followed by its slave, followed by controller 2, and so on and so forth (working through any controllers and drives on add-on cards).
3) All Logical partitions in any Extended Partition on boot HD (in order).
4) All Logical partitions in any Extended Partition on each subsequent HD. Assignment follows the drive order in "2" above, but all logicals on a given drive are assigned first, followed by those on the next sequential drive.
5) Any non-active Primary partition(s) on boot HD (all on this drive)
6) Any non-active Primary partitions on each subsequent HD (all primaries on one drive, followed by all those on the next drive, ...).
7) Removable drives (CDs, Zip, etc), following the order in "2" above.

[Nix]

Originally posted by DrMDJ
Assignment starts with the master on the 1st motherboard controller, followed by its slave, followed by controller 2, and so on and so forth (working through any controllers and drives on add-on cards).

If you see my post here you will see that the only drive with an active primary partition is on the Secondary ATA controller but it gets picked up as C: and then all are labelled following on.

I was most surprised it worked.

[Nix]

I have:

Primary ATA
7.85Gb - Master

7.85Gb Ext Part
H : 1.85Gb Logical
I : 6.00Gb Logical

3.99Gb - Slave

3.99Gb Ext Part
J : 3.99Gb Logical

[b]Secondary ATA[b/]
18.9Gb - Master

C : 1.0Gb - Pri Part Active
K : 2.0Gb - Pri Part InActive
L : 2.0Gb - Pri Part InActive

13.9Gb - Ext Part
D : 3.0Gb Logical
E : 39Mb Logical
F : 3.0Gb Logical
G : 7.89Gb Logical

But use XOSL to hide drives and boot the different versions of Windows on the 3 Primary Partitions.

[DrMDJ]

Correct. On your second drive you had the active primary partition, which was the bootable one. The motherboard bios will always seek out the first active primary partition on a drive to start the boot process from (either on the first sequential drive, or another you specify in bios setup (if you do so)). The way your drives were assigned (as per your other post) is exactly in the order to be expected. From my above post: rule 1 was applied, then 3, then 4, then 5.

The "order" (not lettering) of physical drives to the bios vs the way their seen in fdisk or such can be different (as you saw). The bios always follows a specific sequence, from the 1st mb controller on out to any add-on cards. But because you booted off what was seen as logical drive 2 (to the bios), fdisk saw that as HD1.

Once a boot manager (such as XOSL) is introduced this can make things a little trickier, because of partition hiding.

[Nix]

Originally posted by DrMDJ
Once a boot manager (such as XOSL) is introduced this can make things a little trickier, because of partition hiding.

You can say that again.

[DrMDJ]

LOL. It really is only when you use its hiding features and/or use its ability to "logically" swap drives at boot time. But then again, by default hiding and/or logical swapping introduces abnormality in to the standard dos-style scheme of things. In fact, so does even defining more than one primary dos partition on a given drive. Fun and games, fun and games. But even still there are rules that get followed, they just change a bit.