Strange!

  • Thread starter Thread starter TymaUK
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T

TymaUK

Hi Group

I have just upgraded a HDD in my sisters PC and reinstalled WinXP Pro. The
drives are set up as follows:

Primary Master: 40GB Maxtor
Primary Slave: Maxtor 12GB
Secondary Master: Cd-Rom
Secondary Slave: Cd Writer

But when Windows loads and I open up My Computer it shows this:

C drive: Maxtor 12GB
D drive: CD Rom
E drive: CD Writer
F drive: 40GB maxtor

I cannot understand why a freshly installed OS has assigned the master
drive to F. I have never seen this before so I wonder if anybody can shed
any light on this for me and maybe tell me if I can manually change the
drive letter assignment.

Thanks

TUK
 
Hi
did you set th pins on the drives to slave and master.and does the system
boot from the primary drive.
 
Hi

The drives are all set as they should be and the bios picks them up as they
are set, but its windows that doesn't

TUK
 
It's down to the way NT (which includes XP) systems enumerate existing
drives when you install. I assume that the new drive was the 40 GB one, in
which case XP saw a formatted hard drive (the 12 GB) , one unformatted drive
and two CD drives. The formatted drive was called C: the two CD drives D:
and E: and the unformatted drive was given the next available drive letter
(F:) when you formatted it.

This is one reason why zip drives should not be connected until after XP is
fully installed. They have a tendency to be assigned C: if found during
installation.

DOS based systems, on the other hand, enumerate drives and partitions
differently. They assign drive letters in the following order starting with
C: Primary partition on the first hard drive, primary partitions on any
other hard drives, logical partitions on the first hard drive, logical
partitions on any other hard drives, and finally, CD/DVD drives in sequence.

There is an advantage to the way NT systems enumerate drives, namely that if
you subsequently re-partition your 40 GB drive, using say Partition Magic,
none of the existing drive letters will change and the new partition will be
G:.
Doing the same thing in Windows 9x would make the new partition E: and move
the existing E: and F: to F: and G:.

The disadvantage is that unless you're expecting it, the resultant drive
lettering is confusing.
Had the 40 GB drive been formatted before the install was started, the
drives would have been enumerated as you expected them to be.

You can change any assigned drive letter using Computer Management/Disk
Management *EXCEPT* the boot drive and the system drive, both the same and
F: in your case.

Hope this helps.
 
Mark said:
It's down to the way NT (which includes XP) systems enumerate existing
drives when you install. I assume that the new drive was the 40 GB one, in
which case XP saw a formatted hard drive (the 12 GB) , one unformatted drive
and two CD drives. The formatted drive was called C: the two CD drives D:
and E: and the unformatted drive was given the next available drive letter
(F:) when you formatted it.
Click to expand...

I can't understand why NT doesn't allow you to choose drive letters
during the install - you can change all but the boot and system[1]
drives at any time, so why not let you change boot and system before
they get set?

Of course the concept/notion that C: is always the
main/primary/boot/OS/first or whatever drive is just a hangover from DOS.

Interestingly, it uses a system more akin to DOS/Win9x when it comes to
SCSI drives. I bought 2 U160 disks off eBay and put them in an existing
machine, formatted them NTFS to test them. When I built my new machine
they ended up with the 36GB at SCSI id 14 and the 73GB as id 15. When I
came to install XP on the 73GB drive, XP insisted that it needed to
write something to the 36GB drive as well (boot sector or MBR, can't
remember exactly) because it considered it the primary disk (due to
having the lower SCSI id).

I deleted the partitions on both disks but even after rebooting from the
XP CD it still want to write to the 36GB. Since the 36GB was going to
have FreeBSD installed on it I couldn't have XP relying on it for
booting so it meant pulling the drives out and swapping the ids.

XP's behaviour is rather strange because with SCSI you don't have a
Primary/Secondary master/slave setup, just as many devices as the bus
supports, even several SCSI adaptors and, for Ultra-160/320 devices it
is recommended to populate the bus from id 15 down, rather than id 0 up
due to the way the bus is arbitrated (the latter being used for legacy
devices) so, thinking of the concept of a primary master, id 15 would be it.

[1] Why are the 'boot' and 'system' drives seemingly named backwards? I
have a machine with a single disk with a 512MB FAT C:, no D:, and XP
installed on E: yet it considers C: (the drive it boots from) as the
'system' drive and E: (where the system is) the 'boot' drive. Duh!
 
TymaUK said:
I have just upgraded a HDD in my sisters PC and reinstalled WinXP Pro. The
drives are set up as follows:

Primary Master: 40GB Maxtor
Primary Slave: Maxtor 12GB
Secondary Master: Cd-Rom
Secondary Slave: Cd Writer

But when Windows loads and I open up My Computer it shows this:

C drive: Maxtor 12GB
D drive: CD Rom
E drive: CD Writer
F drive: 40GB maxtor

I cannot understand why a freshly installed OS has assigned the master
drive to F. I have never seen this before so I wonder if anybody can shed
any light on this for me and maybe tell me if I can manually change the
drive letter assignment.
Click to expand...

I've had the same thing happen. To fix it, I turn off the computer and
unplug both CD drives. I then turn on the computer, and the hard drives are
now C and D. Then I shut down again and plug in the CD drives again.
Actually I have to do one CD drive at a time, because if I do them both at
the same time it makes my top drive "F" and my bottom drive "E," which I
don't want. After this is done, it stays the right way.

Works for me, maybe it will work for you.

However, one problem which I have on another computer, which I cannot solve
for the life of me... I have two hard drives on another computer at work.
Both drives have two partitions each. Windows recognizes the first drive as
C and E, and the second drive as D and F! Don't know what to do here. Any
suggestions from anyone?

-Breeze
 
Breeze said:
I've had the same thing happen. To fix it, I turn off the computer and
unplug both CD drives. I then turn on the computer, and the hard drives are
now C and D. Then I shut down again and plug in the CD drives again.
Actually I have to do one CD drive at a time, because if I do them both at
the same time it makes my top drive "F" and my bottom drive "E," which I
don't want. After this is done, it stays the right way.

Works for me, maybe it will work for you.

However, one problem which I have on another computer, which I cannot solve
for the life of me... I have two hard drives on another computer at work.
Both drives have two partitions each. Windows recognizes the first drive as
C and E, and the second drive as D and F! Don't know what to do here. Any
suggestions from anyone?

-Breeze

From the early days of computing, the first hard drive is C and the second
Click to expand...
is D. Then as you partition the first drive gets the next letter which
is E and the second drive gets the next letter which is F. So your
settings are right. It is only when you use a Zip drive which grabs
anything it wants and the CDR's which grab anything. This is another
reason to install Windows with your drives first then add the other
stuff later. One hard drive only,with 3 partitions wind up as C, E,
and F. I know someone with 3 120 Gig harddrives broken up into 8
partitions each and he uses the whole alphabet and still doesn't know
what partions are on what harddrive. When one goes bad he will need a
lot of help. Keep them simple and note what partitions are on what
drive. :-)
 
When I normally set up I do it as follows and have never had any problems -
Set BOTH drive jumpers to CS (Cable Select) - this is a must!
IDE 1, HD-Drive 1 (on end connector on cable), CD drive on intermediate
connector.
IDE 2, HD-Drive 2 (on end connector on cable), CD drive on intermediate
connector.
Go into BIOS & Auto-detect drives.
Then go into the first BIOS screen option & change both hard drives to
'AUTO' - this is also a must!

That should then give you -
C: 40GB Maxtor
D: Maxtor 12GB
E: Cd-Rom
F: Cd Writer
 
Thanks for all the suggestions/comments.

I tried turning off the machine and unplugging all the IDE's except the main
40GB, turned the machine back on and it was still showing 'F'. So I thought
sod it, its a fresh install, so I just reformatted and done another install
reformatting the new drive and that has solved my problem.

Thanks again

TUK

johnf said:
When I normally set up I do it as follows and have never had any problems -
Set BOTH drive jumpers to CS (Cable Select) - this is a must!
IDE 1, HD-Drive 1 (on end connector on cable), CD drive on intermediate
connector.
IDE 2, HD-Drive 2 (on end connector on cable), CD drive on intermediate
connector.
Go into BIOS & Auto-detect drives.
Then go into the first BIOS screen option & change both hard drives to
'AUTO' - this is also a must!

That should then give you -
C: 40GB Maxtor
D: Maxtor 12GB
E: Cd-Rom
F: Cd Writer
Click to expand...
 
TymaUK said:
Thanks for all the suggestions/comments.

I tried turning off the machine and unplugging all the IDE's except the main
40GB, turned the machine back on and it was still showing 'F'. So I thought
Click to expand...

You'll never change the drive letters of the boot and system drives[1].
For example, I had a machine with a single disk with a small FAT
partition, C:, the rest of the disk was NTFS D: with W2K installed. I
used Partition Magic to shrink D: and installed XP in the free space
(E:). When I finally dropped W2K I deleted D: and added the free space
to E: (using PM). XP sees the two partitions as C: and E: not, as Win9x
would do, C: and D:. As Mark said in his post, this is an advantage
because if you move/add/remove disks and partitions around the partition
XP is installed in will always be the same letter (so it will always
boot and run).

Regards,

Parish

[1] Actually you can, there's a MS KB article about it, but it means
registry hacking and is really intended for changing them back to the
original if they get changed without user intervention - which won't
happen normally.
sod it, its a fresh install, so I just reformatted and done another install
reformatting the new drive and that has solved my problem.

Thanks again

TUK
Click to expand...
 
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