** Alan Pope alan.pope@gmail.com [2005-11-07 14:13]:
On 07/11/05, Ted Harding Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk wrote:
You get your new machine with one nice hard drive as IDE1 Master, partition the drive into 3, say, and install Windows. You then get "drives" C:, D:, and E:. Then, later, you expand and install a second hard drive as IDE1 Slave. Windows now assigns this to Drive D:, pushing up your previous partitions to be E: and F:, and the 2nd partition you've made on your new drive is called G:. So you have
That entirely depends on how you partition your disks. At boot Windows looks for the first bootable primary partition on the first disk. It labels that C:, then moves on to other disks and does the same. So D: will only be on the second disk (in your scenario) if you make it a primary partition. If you created it as an extended partition on the second disk you'd get C:, D:, E: on your first disk as you'd expect, and F: on the second (new) disk.
** end quote [Alan Pope]
Hi Alan, enjoying the virtual weather in this part of the country :)
OK, I'll contradict you a bit here. I think you're a bit locked in the old ways of DOS/Win3.1/Win9x rather than NT/2000/XP. The original concept was to pick out the primary partition from each drive starting with IDE0 master, slave, IDE1 master, slave (or through the SCSI IDs in order) and then go back and pick off any other partitions floating around. This was a real pain when you wanted to add another hard disk, particularly if it was already formatted with data in a primary partition as it shifted all your drive letters, CDROM, etc. that were (in 9x) stored in the registry for applications, CDROM installs, etc. Drive letters are a big mistake imho!
NT/2000/XP work differently in that you will generally get the first primary as C:, but then things can change, and C: isn't always guaranteed (although it is usual). I've generally had the CDROM as D: unless I've had other partitions installed at install, and anything added arrives on later letters. That said, I have had the following examples:
Under NT4:
C: CDROM D: Molite optical E: - sorry I forget what this one was :( I think it may have been another HD partition F: NT4 install/boot partition on first primary partition
Under XP Pro:
D: first primary partition on IDE0 master C: first primary partition on IDE1 slave
This last one caused me some real hassle. The install was done with a single partition on IDE0 master with a CDROM as D: as you would expect. It was then cloned to another drive for backup. Sadly I forgot to unplug the second drive before booting the system again and although everything was already configured for it to boot as C: with the new drive on D: it didn't (the new drive was on the CDROM's connector). What it did to was make the primary master on IDE0 both D: and the system partition and make the secondary slave on IDE1 both C: and the partition used for SWAP. From this point on I could not boot without both drives connected and couldn't change the drive letter on either drive because one was the system partition and the other had swap. The quickest fix was a re-clone!
Now why was it I don't like Windows again? Inconsistent, buggy, virus', poor user interface, etc., etc..