Problem with drive assignment letter (read inside)

[power2084]

Hello there !

This is my 1st post.

I have a problem with installing properly a new hard drive that I bought. It's

a 160 gigs capacity, and my 3rd hard drive in my system.

Prior to installing it, here's what the situation was:

** Physical Drive #1: 80 gigs (boot drive) **

C:\ 5 gigs

D:\ 5 Gigs

E:\ 10 Gigs

F:\ 10 Gigs

G:\ 10 Gigs

H:\ 10 Gigs

I:\ 10 Gigs

J:\ 10 Gigs

K:\ 10 Gigs

** Physical Drive #2: 40 Gigs (used for storage, setup as primary slave) **

L:\ 10 Gigs

M:\ 10 Gigs

N:\ 10 Gigs

O:\ 10 Gigs

** CD ROM Drive (setup as secondary slave)**

P:\

Now that's 3 IDE devices, and my system can only accomodate 3, because

one of my IDE cable is a "single", only one IDE device can be plugged on it.

Ok, so here comes my NEW 160 gigs drive. I planned on dividing it in 4 partitions

of 40 gigs, and then to plug it in my system and transfer everything from

Physical drive 2 to it. Once that would be done, I could unplug the Physical Drive #2

and store it away. Drive partition letters would remain the same (as I thought)

because the Operating system manages it automatically.

So in order to have all 3 drives plugged in at the same time, I unplugged the CD rom.

And then I used the plug for the New Drive.

The new (temporary) drive order letters were:

Physical Drive #1 (Primary Master) letters C thru K (same as before),

Physical Drive #2 (Primary Slave) letters L thru O (same as before),

New Drive #3 (Secondary Slave) letters P thru S (remember, the CD Rom was unplugged)

Are you following me ? Ok... So I transfered everything from Drive #2 to Drive #3.

I then shutdown the system, unplugged Drive #2, then I put the new drive #3

in its place (as primary slave). I then reconnected the CD Rom as Secondary Slave

and booted up my system.

Much to my surprise, here's what I got from Windows:

** Physical Drive #1: 80 gigs (boot drive) **

C:\ 5 gigs

D:\ 5 Gigs

E:\ 10 Gigs

F:\ 10 Gigs

G:\ 10 Gigs

H:\ 10 Gigs

I:\ 10 Gigs

J:\ 10 Gigs

K:\ 10 Gigs

** CD ROM Drive (setup as secondary slave)**

L:\

** Physical Drive #3: 160 Gigs (used for storage, setup as primary slave) **

P:\ 40 Gigs

Q:\ 40 Gigs

R:\ 40 Gigs

S:\ 40 Gigs

I'm sure you can see what the problem is. 3 problems occured: the drive letters for the new drive were not

moved back to L, M, N O. And the CD Rom (which is supposed to get the lowest priority in drive letters

from Windows) should have been assigned LAST (to P:\) . And finally, there is no drive letter M, N and O

in my system.

This is all bad, because in order for my system to function properly, the drive letters of the new drive must

match those of the old drive #2.

What happened ? Did I do anything wrong ? Can anyone help ?

I really need to fix it. If you need more details, please ask !

Thanks in advance...

[prathapml]

Welcome to MSFN!

Please post in the appropriate section, moving this topic now... *

[Synapse]

Unplug your CD rom drive.. then go to:

Control Panel -> Administrative tools -> Computer Management -> Storage -> Disk Management

set the drive letters to what you want.. then shut down... plug your CD rom back in and check.. that should fix it.