Problem with drive letters

[nodiaque]

Hi, I have 3 hd into my computer:

Primary Master (1): 120 Gigs

Primary Slave (2): 40 Gigs

Secondary Master (3): 160 Gigs

Now, here is my partition (will use number for hd like this: letter, drive, size)

C, 1, 20 gigs

D, 1, 100 gigs

E, 2, 40 gigs

F, 3, 160 gigs

When I start my windows installation, my drive D and E swap (D become E and E become D). I used windows disk management to restore my original drive letters (since "my documents" is in my D drive, it get f***ed up after installation).

I reinstall windows again and see it do the same. This time, I tried with partition magic to change letters.

Make a new installation again, and then I saw in windows installation partitionning screen that it's still f***ed up.

Now I want to know how to fix that, I want to always have the same drive letters and that it doesn't change when I format.

Thanks (if it's not clear what is going on, just tell me, I'll try to make it clearer)

[Br4tt3]

dunno for sure... i guess that it can be the fact that u have ur primary drive devided into 2 partitions.. in the sif file, do u use repartition=yes ?? that would repartition the primary disk to one big disk and change the drive letters...

try using diskpart, u can script that aswell.... it sounds as if u have something going on in ur answer file to the unattended win file that messes with ur overall idea over how the disks should look like when done...

keep trucking man.

[nodiaque]

no I don't use that, I repartition myself (it's unattended except for the partition manager).

This happen not only in unattended installation but even if I reinstall from original windows cd.

[evilvoice]

if you look at it, i think windows is naming drives based on size, seeing that e is smaller than d, e becomes d and d becomes e since it smaller than f

[lpl]

Hi,

Actually, Windows assigns drive letters according to specific rules.. It always looks for first primary MS-DOS partition and sets as C. then goes on to look for 2nd, 3rd, 4th hard disk (primary) and sets those first as D, E, F, before coming back to logical drives on the 1st, 2nd, 3rd harddisk.

I'm confusing...but these articles will help.. I've got the same problem too. May have to look into creating a batch file or script in the unattended?

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/books/tr...olutions/89.asp

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...=kb;en-us;51978

creating script

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documen...kb_cnc_boaj.asp

[jaclaz]

Yep.

lpl is right,

What nodiaque should have posted is, presumably, this:

C, 1,  20 Gigs PRIMARY
D, 1, 100 Gigs LOGICAL
E, 2,  40 Gigs PRIMARY
F, 3, 160 Gigs LOGICAL

Any DOS/WINDOWS adopts this convention, (as you might know, no MS kind of FDISK allows you to make more than one primary partition per each disk):

Letter A: is reserved for first floppy

Letter B: is reserved for second floppy

Letter C: is reserved for first PRIMARY partition on first drive

Subsequent letters are given to all other PRIMARY partitions in the order of the number of the drive.

When all PRIMARY partitions have got their letters assigned, lettering restarts from first LOGICAL partition on first drive and goes on like above.

The solutions to your problem could be to convert the PRIMARY partitions on second drive to LOGICAL.

This COULD be made with Partition Magic, but there are reports of people LOOSING DATA in the process, so I would rather MAKE A FULL BACKUP OF DATA before attempting to do it.

As a general rule, one must plan the partitioning of disks in a manner that letter assigning, at least for the partitions where system files reside, is the same as the automatic given one.

jaclaz

[Ashimema]

that's all really useful, i've had the same problem for ages now, thankyou!

nodiaque has it all worked for you now, or are you still battleing on?

[MHz]

To add to this. Make sure that master and slave connections align with the harddrives. If you have the master connected to the slave IDE, windows may arrange it as a latter drive letter. Speaking IDE here of course.

btw all SATA are all masters, so no prob there.

[MHz]

@jaclaz

The way dos show drive letters and windows shows them are two different story's.

I have lost data through drive mix up. Expensive lesson to learn.

The hardware setup must be correct before anything else

.

[big_gie]

I have the same issue and I'm disconnecting the second harddrive to be sure while installing but this is a pain. I have only one partition on that 2nd hd, which is primary. If I switch it to logical with Acronis, whats the chance it failed? Anyone did this before?

[jaclaz]

@Mhz

Yes, you summed up what I wanted to say.

The big difference is that different Dos/windows see only some kind of partitions, so ignores the one it doesn't know anything about, quick reminder:

Dos and Windows 95 1st edition ->FAT16 only

NT 3.51 and 4.00 -> FAT16 and NTFS (v4.00?)

Windows 95 OEM2, 98 and ME ->FAT 16 and FAT32

Windows 2000/XP/2003 ->FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS(v.5.00?, automatically convert older v4.00 partitions to v.5.00 without asking the user)

The rule of the thumb if you want/need more than one OS on the same machine,are the following:

1) always install operating system in the order of their age (older first)

2) avoid having more than one Primary partition on 1st hard drive, if possible, or use a Boot Manager to hide other Primary partitions, if the operating system can read it (i.e. if you have DOS on the 1st active Primary partition and you install NT on another primary partition on 1st Hard Disk, you have no problem if the latter is NTFS, as Dos cannot read it, if the latter is FAT 16, you could get problems)

3) avoid to have Primary partitions on 2nd, 3rd, etc. Hard Drives, or , better, make on them a small FAT 16 Partition and Hide it with a BootManager, for recovery purposes only.

@big_gie

Though it SHOULD be safe, it is always better to have a backup, though I know how it is difficult to make backups with these big drives and all the things we put in it.

A "Safer" method, if you have roughly 1/3 of the HD free, is to :

1) Defrag the partition

2) Use Acronis to reduce partition size to a minimum

3) Use Acronis to make a new Logical partition in the thus freed space

4) Use Acronis to image the partition on the newly created Logical (images are compressed, if your original files are not all zipped or JPG, you probably will get 50% size)

5) Use Acronis to convert Primary partition to logical

6) If all went well delete the Logical Partition with the image

I used Acronis quite a lot, and it never failed me, but Murphy's law is always around!

P.S. If you do not have an UPS, don't even THINK of doing this!

jaclaz

[big_gie]

Though it SHOULD be safe, it is always better to have a backup, though I know how it is difficult to make backups with these big drives and all the things we put in it.

A "Safer" method, if you have roughly 1/3 of the HD free, is to :

1) Defrag the partition

2) Use Acronis to reduce partition size to a minimum

3) Use Acronis to make a new Logical partition in the thus freed space

4) Use Acronis to image the partition on the newly created Logical (images are compressed, if your original files are not all zipped or JPG, you probably will get 50% size)

5) Use Acronis to convert Primary partition to logical

6) If all went well delete the Logical Partition with the image

I used Acronis quite a lot, and it never failed me, but Murphy's law is always around!

P.S. If you do not have an UPS, don't even THINK of doing this!

jaclaz

Thanx!

I didn't want to backup everything, but since I'm leaving soon I burned almost everything so I will try this.

I always had better results with Acronis then PQPM...

Whats UPS?? United Post Service?

[jaclaz]

Just for the record:

Uninterruptable

Power

Supply

If your mains go down while converting a partition, you can be pretty sure that the result will be messed up!

I know that nowadays power shortages are rare, but you never know, and sometimes, depending on the cabling where you live, it is enough, for example, that you have a building site near you that starts a big electrical compressor or whatever to send to your lines a power surge strong enough to fail the process.

jaclaz

[big_gie]

Ok thanx!

[nodiaque]

Yep.

lpl is right,

What nodiaque should have posted is, presumably, this:

C, 1,  20 Gigs PRIMARY
D, 1, 100 Gigs LOGICAL
E, 2,  40 Gigs PRIMARY
F, 3, 160 Gigs LOGICAL

Any DOS/WINDOWS adopts this convention, (as you might know, no MS kind of FDISK allows you to make more than one primary partition per each disk):

Letter A: is reserved for first floppy

Letter B: is reserved for second floppy

Letter C: is reserved for first PRIMARY partition on first drive

Subsequent letters are given to all other PRIMARY partitions in the order of the number of the drive.

When all PRIMARY partitions have got their letters assigned, lettering restarts from first LOGICAL partition on first drive and goes on like above.

The solutions to your problem could be to convert the PRIMARY partitions on second drive to LOGICAL.

This COULD be made with Partition Magic, but there are reports of people LOOSING DATA in the process, so I would rather MAKE A FULL BACKUP OF DATA before attempting to do it.

As a general rule, one must plan the partitioning of disks in a manner that letter assigning, at least for the partitions where system files reside, is the same as the automatic given one.

jaclaz

hmmm... sorry but this isnt all for the lettre assignment...

You see, I changed my configuration, my 40 Gigs hd is in my xbox so here is my configuration:

1x 120 gigs
1x 160 gigs

Here is the partitionning now:

120 Gigs:
  Primary 20 Gigs
  Logical 100 Gigs

160 Gigs
   Primary 160Gigs

and now for the letter naming:

C, 1, 20 Gigs
D, 1, 100 Gigs
E, CDROM
F, 2, 160 Gigs

Same after format. So I think it's more then just primary vs logical since my cdrom take a slot in the letter.

To answer question right above this question, no I didn't solve my problem.