That is how all BIOS deal with hard drives.
The primary partition(s) of the actual physical drive(s) is/are always
labeled first,
in the order of the IDE connections

Primary Master, primary partition = C:
Primary Slave, primary partition = D:
Secondary Master, primary partition =E:
Secondary Slave, primary partition - F:

then any logical drives are assigned.
Primary Master, first logical partition =G:
Primary Master, second logical partition = H:
etc etc.

Naturally all drive letter assignments would move upwards if all
physical
drive slots are not filled.

Jim Meagher
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Micro Solutions Consulting     Member of The HTML Writers Guild
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-----Original Message-----
From: Errol <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Saturday, April 04, 1998 12:27 PM
Subject: [PCBUILD] Hard Drive letters out of sinc.


>Greetings to all you clever People,
>
>I wonder if somebody can help me with a problem........
>
>I had only one hard drive on my system (Western Digital
>Caviar 3.1 GIG) which was partitioned as C: and D: drives.
>
>I was given a Samsung 1.2 GIG hard drive that a friend did
>not need anymore, so I thought I will install this drive as
>drive E: and use it to copy my data files to as an extra
>backup.
>
>So I installed the correctly jumperd Samsung as a slave on
>the primary IDE channel, set the CMOS to see this drive and
>switched on.  Windows 95 booted OK and everything seemed
>just fine.
>
>Then I noticed my problem..... My WD was now C: and E: drive
>and the new Samsung was D: drive.  This is causing problems
>with the running of some of my programs as they are looking
>for files on the D: drive which are now on E: drive.
>
>I have tried everything I know to get my WD drive to be C:
>and D: and the Samsung to be E: but to no avail.
>
>I also tried putting the Samsung on the secondary IDE as a
>master. My CD drive is also on the secondary IDE, but the
>problem is exactly the same.
>
>As a temporary fix I set my CMOS to reflect a slave drive is
>present on my primary IDE, and put the Samsung on the
>secondary IDE as a master. All that happens is that when I
>boot my system, I get an error message saying that the slave
>drive on the primary IDE is missing, I then have the option
>of pressing F1 to continue. At least this way the drive
>letters are in the correct order and all my programs run
>correctly.
>
>Is there a way to sort this problem out properly ?   I am
>not too happy with my temporary solution.
>
>Both the WD and Samsung drives run in LBA mode. I am running
>Intel 200mgHZ MMX CPU, 64meg's RAM, Award BIOS (1997), VX
>chipset Mother Board and Windows 95 (OEM).
>
>Thank you all in advance.......
>
>Errol Lishman.
>Johannesburg
>South Africa
>mailto:[log in to unmask]
>================
>