rachaeldetyne

I'm routinely building PCs for friends who live all over the country.... and always build a "normal" installation and a "backup" installation to ensure that as and when the user messes up one installation they can generally switch to a fully working system at the touch of a button. This is my normal single-disk partition setup: {c} Boot (6-10Gb to host virtual memory of each system) {d} System01 (10-25Gb) {e} System02 (10-25Gb) I then create an extended partition with a logical drive {f} for "data" or "working directories" (things requiring regular backup), {g} for "store" or "archive" (downloads, photo and music archives and so on) and sometimes {h} for "resources" (installation CDs, downloads and so on). Now... the XP installer wants to create a primary partition... then an extended partition to filll the rest of the disk: try doing the above in a hurry and both System01 and System02 will be on logical drives (bad news if the partition goes AWOL) - but if you try hard enough (and curse enough) you can finally get everything in it's rightful place. Onto my headache: I've just done this on a two-disk system (2-3 partitions on the second disk) and have had to do a fresh installation of System01... and no matter what I do the XP installer wants to allocate drive letter {d} to the first partition on the second hard drive and drive letters {e}, {f} and so on to the logical drives on the extended partition. I'm determined to get my system standardised with all the others as it makes telephone support easier... but at present system01 is showing up as drive {h}... and I can't see any way of doing it any differently. If there's a better overall approach then I'm prepared to change my "default"... but if someone can help me get this setup right without completely wiping everything and starting again I'd be grateful. Title Edited - Please follow new posting rules from now on. --Zxian