Drive letter assignment on WinXP install

[jose ramos]

I have two hard drives: one is a 74GB Raptor I use for the OS, the other is a 160GB Seagate I use for data. I want to re-install WinXP unattended forcing the installation to assign letter C: to the Raptor, without erasing the data already on the Seagate drive which I want to be drive D:.

What is happening when I do an unattended installation is that Windows setup assigns letter C: to the Seagate drive, which has the data, and E: to the Raptor drive which has the OS, besides assigning letter D: to the CDROM. Then, when WinXP is already installed, I go into the Drive Management tool to change the OS drive letter from E: to C:, but the system will not allow me to because E: is the OS drive.

How can I force my unattended installation to assign letter C: to the OS drive (Raptor) from the beginning of the installation, on the formatting/partitioning phase?

Or, is there a way to reassign the drive letter C: to the OS HD after Win XP is installed?

Regards to all, and thanks in advance for info you guys can provide on this.

[jbm]

Turn off computer nplug the power and data cables from the seagate drive.

Install XP to the raptor. Assign E: to the CDRom drive

using disk management (right click on my computer and choose

manage). Turn off computer plug the cable back into the seagate drive.

boot and it should be set as you wanted.

Changing the letter assigned to the Boot drive involves extensive

editing of the registry.

[DonDamm]

That is the foolproof method and will work. An alternative involves configuring your SCSI BIOS first to set the drive as the boot drive. The SCSI bios kicks in first, but usually hands off back to the system unless you tell it otherwise. Then all the SCSI devices are enumerated AFTER the ide and optical drives, which is why youu see the drive order you do.

Either way will force your system to see the scsi drive first which will then become the system drive and be assigned C: