"Plug and Play" hard drive? "Partition assignment"? I'm hoping the
computer doesn't remove the drive's partiton table when you install
other hard drives, but I guess anything's possible.
Windows ME/9x/MS-DOS, dynamically updates drive lettering because
Windows ME doesn't store drive lettering, anywhere. It will always
assume the primary master drive is C:, or that the drive it's booting
off of is C: (in other words, the partiton that is active and that the
BIOS is booting from is always C:)
It then assigns drive letters like this:
(this will depend on the number of primary partitons on each drive and
the logical drives assigned in the extended partitions, should they
exist.)
IDE:
Primary Master: C:
Primary Slave: E:
Secondary Master: D:
Secondary Slave: F:
(assuming everything is a hard drive)
CD-ROM drives always get letters after the hard drives or whatever
you've manually assigned them, although the OS still will push them to
the end. This explains why some hp Pavillions use "M:" as the CD-ROM
drive, that way their tech support doesn't have to figure out what the
drive letter *might* be.
This ordering gets more complicated when you have drives with two or
three (or four) primary partitons and an extended partiton (obviously
containing logical drives).
Windows NT, 2000, and XP store the drive letter assignments in the OS.
If you install Windows NT to drive E: it will remain drive E: even if
you move it, remove and reinstall it, or remove other drives or CD-ROM
drives.
Drive letter assignments for the System volume ("partiton") are
usually permanent. You have to remove the OS from them to change the
lettering, or better yet format the volume. You'll notice Windows may
screw up an installation if it sees two system partitions with the
same drive letter because it will reassign the lettering of the
non-booted volume and make it unusable.
--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], chrisrange <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> >
> > In a message dated 12/4/2004 3:33:25 P.M. Central Standard Time,
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
> >
> > 1. Did you, in any way, change the partition
> > information? I am asking that because, what you have
> > described above, means that, the second partition on
> > the first 'physical' HD, and the second HD basically
> > swapped drive assignments?
> >
> >
> > No, I didn't change anything. It does it on it's own as soon as
another
> > hard drive is installed. I have never tried changing the letters
myself cuz I
> > am afraid of messing something up. Everytime I have unplugged a
drive and
> > plugged it in again, the letters automatically change. I am not
one to
> > experiment with things to have something like that happen. I
always thought that was
> > odd that the second partition on the first drive changes like
that. I also
> > noticed that after adding a third and fourth HD, the letters of
the first
> > drive always stay as C (of course) and E. I have just wondering
about that.
> >
> > Also, I am running Win ME
> Thinking about it again, since the second 'physical' HD is, probably
'plug
> n play', when that HD was installed, it could have messed around w/ the
> assignment of 'D:'. It took it from the partition assignment of the
Master
> and, assigned it to the Slave.
>
> Christopher
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