adding 2n HD effects drive letters

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I want to add a 2nd sata hd (200g) in xpsp2 w/ media center...... I have in
my system now one sata,dvdrw,dvdrom,card reader. My question is when i add
the 2nd HD what effect will it have on the drive letters that are already in
use? Will the letters change and if so, how will this effect
applications/programs that points to them now.

Lakkdon
 
Not sure, but if you install as slave it will take d: (the next one to c:
:); But then, I am not sure how SATA is treated - might not be slave but...
S(erial) ATA. For ex., if you install in RAID0 you don't get a new drive
letter at all since both RAID0 disks will be "seen" as one.
Just plug it and see what youy get :)

Michael
 
lakkdon said:
I want to add a 2nd sata hd (200g) in xpsp2 w/ media center...... I have in
my system now one sata,dvdrw,dvdrom,card reader. My question is when i add
the 2nd HD what effect will it have on the drive letters that are already
in
use? Will the letters change and if so, how will this effect
applications/programs that points to them now.

Lakkdon
Click to expand...

Normally it will just take the next available drive letter. You can give it
whatever letter you want through Drive Management.
 
I want to make the 2nd drive as D: but this would change all the other
letters one letterup (except C:) and confuse apps./programs/windows apps.
that are already pointing to these letters. Example;when ripping in media
player, it nows that the dvdrom is drive D: So if the 2nd drive takes D: and
rom is moved to letter E: will it know that rom has moved to E:
This is what i am affraid might happen not just in media player but other
apps. as well. Will this be a probem.
 
Well,
if your apps are coded correctly, the CD and/or DVD drives should have
relative addresses (%CDDrive%) or such; Xp reassigns drive letters for
removable devices on every boot - or even hot. Of course, you might have
other "drive emulation" settings in BIOS where a DVD drive might be
installed as Floppy Drive, harddrive, forced drive. Needless to say, those
BIOS settings do not always work as desired.
My guess is that your CD/DVD drives will be identified correctly. Maker sure
you install the new harddrive correctly in BIOS.
Michael
 
On a FAT32 system the new drive's primary partition will become drive D:.
(The rule is primary partitions before extended.) To avoid this the whole
drive would have to be set up as an extended partition.

Don't know about NTFS but my guess is it would become D:
 
In
Jerry said:
On a FAT32 system the new drive's primary partition will become
drive
D:. (The rule is primary partitions before extended.) To avoid
this
the whole drive would have to be set up as an extended
partition.
Click to expand...


No, regardless of what file system you use, you can easily change
the drive letter of any drive but C: in Computer Management |
Disk Management.
 
This is exactly why I custom-name all my drives. My DVD drives are all V and
my writable drives are W and back when I had a zip drive I named it Z. In
the same manner, my shared server drive is S on all the computers that
access it, and my media files are on a shared drive called M.

Whether you plan will cause you any issues or not depends on whether or not
your programs see the CD drive letters as a constant, or whether they are
able to dynamically find the drive, no matter what letter you assign to it.

If you want to name the new drive D, go ahead and do so, and see if your
programs work the way you want. If you have problems, you then have the
choice of either fixing the programs pointing to the CD or renaming the hard
drive.

If it was me, I'd do it the easy way and name the hard drive something else
based on what I'd me storing there.
 
Well, i have decided that i will just let the 2nd HD take the next available
letters after my other devices (primary C:, dvdrw D:, dvdrom E:, card reader
f: thru I:) since i do plan on partitioning this drive based on what i will
be saving which will be audio, pix, video stuff. Maybe assigning letters
similar to what you have Currie.
I'll let u guys now how things worsk out.
Thanks
 
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