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Drive letters shifted when I add a 2nd HD w/1 logical partition. Why?


E-66

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Kinda confused as to why this is happening and could use an explanation.

My main HD normally has 3 partitions - the primary and two logicals, so C, D, & E. I know if I add a 2nd HD with a primary partition that partition becomes the new D, so my main HD would then become C, E, & F.

Just as an experiment I made 3 partitions on my main HD, but made all of them primary partitions. I then added a 2nd HD to the system that contained one logical partition. I thought this would keep my drive letters as they were, with the 2nd HD becoming F, but that's not what happened. The drive letters shifted exactly as they did in my first example and I don't understand why. I was reading on the PC Guide about the way drive letters are assigned (link below), and according to what I read there my drive letters shouldn't have shifted.

Can someone explain why they did?

http://pcguide.com/ref/hdd/file/partLetter-c.html

Edited by E-66
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As far as I have seen it always behaves like that.

First drive letter is the first partition of Disk 0.

Second drive letter is the first partition of Disk 1.

Etc...

Regardless of primary/logical partitions.

snap0470jo0.png

There is a tool to change letter assignments : http://www.v72735.f2s.com/LetAssig/

Can't comment on it though as I have never let it install entirely.

Edited by eidenk
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It is not recommended to make more than one primary partition per HDD and Windows 98 SE FDISK does not allow to create them.

The ordering from my experience is as follows:

- primary partition of the first HDD

- primary partition of the second HDD (if any)

- primary partition of the third HDD (if any)

- primary partition of the fourth HDD (if any)

- all logical drives in extended partition of the first HDD (if any)

- all logical drives in extended partition of the second HDD (if any)

- all logical drives in extended partition of the third HDD (if any)

- all logical drives in extended partition of the fourth HDD (if any)

I know it very well because I had several removable disks with logical drives in extended partition only and they did not move my disk D (logical drive in extended partition of the first HDD).

Petr

Edited by Petr
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It is not recommended to make more than one primary partition per HDD and Windows 98 SE FDISK does not allow to create them.
I've never had more than 1 primary partition on a HD before until I tried this experiment, but what is the reason you shouldn't have more than 1 per HD in Win98? I use GDISK instead of FDISK so it wasn't a problem for me to create them, and I have no problem changing things back to the way they were before (1 primary and 2 logicals instead of the current 3 primaries), but I'd like to understand why.

Eidenk, that drive letter assigner program worked perfectly. I think I might use it once I set my HD back to the way I had it before.

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It is not recommended to make more than one primary partition per HDD and Windows 98 SE FDISK does not allow to create them.
I've never had more than 1 primary partition on a HD before until I tried this experiment, but what is the reason you shouldn't have more than 1 per HD in Win98? I use GDISK instead of FDISK so it wasn't a problem for me to create them, and I have no problem changing things back to the way they were before (1 primary and 2 logicals instead of the current 3 primaries), but I'd like to understand why.

I don't know why. Maybe this configuration is not tested and may give unpredictable or inconsistent results.

Petr

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Ah, ok, maybe someone else will chime in. I've since changed my main HD back to how I had it before - 1 primary, 2 logical, and am going to try using the drive letter assigner program that eidenk linked to in post #2.

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The enumeration mechanism follows the order -

The first partition of each physical drive is enumerated, followed by the second partition of each physical drive, third partition, etc.

My experience shows that this is not correct.

Petr

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I agree with Petr. Primary first, logical then.

Multiple primary partitions ? I'm sure that's why Win98 messed up the drive letters.

Sometimes, Windows doesn't refresh the drive letters when you change partitions so you have to unplug the disk, start windows and replug it later.

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The article above is incorrect anyway as your experience and my screenshot shows.

LLXX is also incorrect if you want to look at the screenshot again, particularly at disk 1.

It's Paragon who created the partitions but it is Windows who detected them and named them like that on reboot.

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Eidenk, that drive letter assigner program worked great, thanks for posting the link to it. I've just recently started messing around with XP and dual booting and with the help of that program I was able to keep my main HD partitions named C, D, & E (instead of C, E, & F) while installing XP on the 2nd HD on the first partition named F (instead of D).

Edited by E-66
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I'd avoid the use of the drive letter assigner program if possible because it means that you will have different letters in DOS and different in Windows - a good chance to do something wrong.

Petr

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I've tried one experiment and put after C: another two disks with the same layout:

DISK 2

1. PRIMARY - D

2. PRIMARY - J

3. EXTENDED

\-- logical disk - F

\-- logical disk - G

4. EXTENDED

\-- logical disk - L

\-- logical disk - M

DISK 3

1. PRIMARY - E

2. PRIMARY - K

3. EXTENDED

\-- logical disk - H

\-- logical disk - I

4. EXTENDED

\-- logical disk - N

\-- logical disk - O

but the system was so confused that format overwrote one partition by another and even it was not possible to format all disks. Also Win98SE FDISK did not displayed correctly the logical drives in the second extended partition.

So here is the resulting rule for disk ordering:

- the first primary partition on every disk

- logical drives in the first extended partition on every disk

- the second primary partition on every disk

- logical drives in the second extended partition on every disk

So there is the answer to the original E-66 question "Why?":

In the first setup the order was disk1-primary, disk2-primary, disk1-logical, disk1-logical

In the second setup the order was disk1-primry, disk2-logical, disk1-primary2, disk1-primary3

So the mistake was to change the logical drives to primary partitions. Without this, the order would be:

disk1-primary, disk1-logical, disk1-logical, disk2-logical

exactly as needed.

So after my short experiment I again recommend not to use more than one DOS/Win primary and one extended partition. And don't change the letters by any utility unless it is really necessary. Anything other is just asking for troubles.

Petr

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