HD letter identification in Windows.

[Mark8]

HI people!

I have a HD with two partition on primary IDE and Windows see them as C: and D:. Now i want add a removable HD as slave, how can i do to get letter E: [or other but D:] for this one in Windows?
The problem is that when the removable HD is in i get C:[1st part.], D:[Removable] and E:[2nd part.] when this one is out i get C:[1st part.] and D:[2nd part.]!

~Mark8~

[This message has been edited by Mark8 (edited 18 November 1999).]

[Kruzin]

That's just how it is. When the letters are assigned at bootup, it always gives primary partitions the first letters, then secondary. AFAIK, there is no way to change it...

[KvHagedorn]

When I had a Sparq drive (cursed Syquest crap..) It would assign it a drive letter after my hard drive partitions (I had 4 hdd partitions at the time) But the Sparq drive was IDE and the hard drive partitions were SCSI. Perhaps this was why. I thought Windows 98 actually would identify a removable drive and place its letter after the hard drives'. Perhaps Microsoft's website will have more detail on this.

BTW, what type of removable drive are you using?
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Kind Regards,

KvH



[This message has been edited by KvHagedorn (edited 18 November 1999).]

[Jorden]

Well, Kruzin, there is a way to change that...

As Kruzin says, when the letters are assigned at bootup, it always gives primary partitions the first letters, then secondary.

Just use fdisk to make a secondary partition on the removable harddrive only. It might be that it won't let you, that you have to make a primary partition of it, but if you don't activate that partition, it's now set behind drive D: ...

I must add that it did in my setup, with non-removable drives and 2 partitions on my main drive, 1 partition on the slave drive.

Jorden.

[Mark8]

Hello dear Boyz!

I'm happy to know that a possibility exist; thank you Jorden, i'll try it and will "murcpost" the news!

Ehm...KvHagedorn, i have to say that the removable HD is a recycled old one ( a 200MB with a case to use it as removable!) to transport data from office to home...

~Mark8~

[KvHagedorn]

Thought so. I have tried a couple of different removable cartridge drives and was very disappointed in their integrity. This should work much better (as long as you don't wear out the pins)

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Kind Regards,

KvH

[Mark F]

Have you tried going into DEVICE MANAGER and in the removable drives PROPERTIES, going into SETTINGS, ans setting the START DRIVE LETTER to E: ?

Also some programes (like partion magic) alow you to set drives letters.

Mark F.

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OH NO, my retractable cup holder swallowed a CD

[Jorden]

Mark8: If it doesn't work, move all your files from your existing D: drive to the removable drive and you shouldn't have any problems !!

Jord.

[GD]

DOS used to have a command named assign many years ago... I don't know if it really assigns letters to partitions/drives though. I tried assign/? in the command prompt but nothing happened so I guess it is no longer used...

[arbymo]

ummm .. no one mentioned this ..
when u connect the other drive DO NOT make bios detect it .. just make sure that in BIOS it is set to none ... and that your 1st drive is identified in BIOS .. this method works for me, only drawback that u can't access the drive through DOS and probably OS/2, while Win9x uses int 13 to access the drive.
and make sure the drive is already correctly partitioned and formatted before u do that.
Warning : if u use linux, it'll identify that HD as normal not LBA and will end up with a drive that has different geometry in linux (C/H/S) than in windows (LBA).
in your case it won't matter coz ur drive is 200 meg which is less than 528 so it should work as normal by default.
give it a try and keep us informed.



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Giga Byte 6BXE, celeron300A@450, 128 Ram
G200 8M SD, driver 5.25, Bios 1.6

[Mark8]

Ciao a tutti,

Well, boyz excuse me for my absence but i was very busy. Thanks anyone for the suggestions, i have read these ones now and i'll try everything and will keep you informed!
Jorden that's all right - Under DOS i used FDISK and have created a new secondary partition only without the primary one on slave removable HD, the result is that my master HD keep the logical device letter C: e D: for his partitions and if is present the removable one this gets the letter --> E: <--! Great!

~Mark8~

My SYS
Asus P2B bios rev.1011, Celeron 300a (O/Ced @ 450), 64MB dimm, Quantum 6.4GB, Mystique G200 8MB (O/Ced @ 200MHz, AGP2X, bios 1.6 drv 5.30), S.B. PCI128, SupraExpress 56i V90, Asus 40X cdrom, Philips cdrw 404, and a Conner 200MB in removable case, Win98 S.E..

[This message has been edited by Mark8 (edited 20 November 1999).]

[This message has been edited by Mark8 (edited 20 November 1999).]

[Mark8]

Ciao,

ehm Mark F, i have just tried your suggestion but is impossible (grayed option!) to modify the drive letter for any HD though removable.

Arbymo i tried your suggestion too but nothing is happened: Win98 doesn't find any HD if this one isn't identified in bios!!!

Thank You

~Mark8~

[paulcs]

I had an IDE Zip Drive that did the same thing when I built my first computer. If memory serves me correctly, and it often doesn't, the problem was related to the master/slave configuration of the Zip Drive and my CD-ROM. The Zip Drive didn't like being one or the other, I can't remember which.

Is your removable hard drive on the same IDE channel as your CD-ROM. Have you tried reversing them?

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net