TurboFool

I do have data on them, but that's what I was thinking. I have Acronis True Image, which I used to back up each of those partitions, anyway. Plus I was considering resizing the partitions anyway (turns out I use a lot less space on C than I thought), so I guess I can use this opportunity. I just always get nervous about actually falling back on those images. While they've worked for me before I always fear this will be the time they don't, lol. Did you even read my post? I said that I'm well aware I can do that after I've already installed Windows. My point was that I was hoping to use nLite's option to set my default Program Files directory to the F drive, which would have to be done BEFORE Windows is installed, and therefore BEFORE I can change those drive letters around. Sure I can change it afterwards, but then all of the programs installed during Windows setup will end up on the C drive, which isn't what I want. Trust me, I'm not a n00b, here, and I doubt I could have had partitions lettered S, M, and X (not to mention Z for my zip drive) if I didn't know that trick.

All right, so I just went to reformat my system as I've done frequently. For the first time, though, I'm actually setting my nLite unattended installation disc to change the default program files directory to a place on my F drive. But that's where I'm running into my problem. My configuration includes three hard drives. My boot is a SATA and the other two (master and slave on the same channel) are PATA IDEs. My SATA drive contains four partitions, and in my current Windows XP installation they are all lettered in order (C is boot, D is for dual-boot OSes, E is a small partition for documents and other irreplaceable stuff that fragments easily, and F is for programs and downloads). My PATA Master is partitioned into a FAT32 swap file partition (S) and a partition for all my large files (M for Multimedia). And then I have a 60GB just for routine images of my C drive and irreplaceable files. Now I know Windows likes to see my PATA drives as my primary drives, assigning the first partition (the FAT32) on my Master PATA drive the letter C and putting the boot files there (ugh), so like the first time I installed Windows on my SATA drive, I went ahead and unhooked the ribbon to the two PATA drives so installation would see only the appropriate drive. During setup, though, an odd thing happened. Unlike last time I installed, where Windows logically assigned each drive an appropriate letter starting at C and ending in F based on their order on the drive, this time it assigned the first partition C (correctly), and then assigned the remaining three the letters G, H, and I, in order. What gives? Why did it skip D, E, and F, the three letters those drives are actually assigned right now? Now I know I can change them after Windows is installed, but this will preclude me from using the nLite option to have all programs installed to my F drive, and I really wanted to use that. So, any clue what's causing this, and any tips on how to fix it?