"We" were only talking about the second physical hard drive,
the Slave, in the following... (See your original question, below.)
I was not talking about erasing your partitions on the Master.
(Glad you asked again though, if it was not clear...)

If you want the Slave to show up as higher letter(s), and not have
the OS put it in as "D", you need to NOT have a Primary partition
on the Slave. It should only have an Extended partition with one or
more (possibly limited to four) Logical drives. (Since it is small, this
is not much of a limitation in this case, unless you were going for
"CD-Burning" sized partitions, which should still fit nicely...)

Since you can NOT get rid of a primary partition without removing
all the other logical drives and other partitions on the slave drive
first, (assuming you are using a basic tool like Fdisk), it is clear
that the slave must be backed up and redone from scratch.
There are advanced tools that do this easier, but I do not use them,
and doubt if you do either.

All of this follows easy to follow DOS rules of how the OS assigns
drive letters.
Primary partitions get drive letters first.
Extended partitions do not get a drive letter, BUT, the logical drives
in them get drive letters in order, starting on the physical spindle
that contains the Primary partition(s), then any physical spindles
that "only" have Extended partitions, in the order found while booting.
(A "real technical" description of that might take a page or two...
This is the short version...)

"Software driver type drives", (like, but not limited to, CD-ROM drives)
are generally last to get letters, unless you have other software drivers
competing for letters at this level... (Or assigning them special letters.)

None of this accounts for the drive letters that can be "forced" by other
software drivers such as Zip Drives, and/or moving CD drive letters...
I have had a CD-Rom drive surrounded by IDE "software driver drives"
(as opposed to BIOS supported drives) under special circumstances.
Do not worry about this last paragraph too much, but keep it in mind
IF you are loading special drivers for other devices, or add-in cards
(with stuff attached) that will also compete for drive letters.
                       Rick Glazier
PS: I saw another of your questions on the other "NoSpin" list,
              "Re: [PCSOFT] Hard Drive/Clean & Reformat"
So I will add, in advance, that this is true to the best of my
knowledge, understanding, and belief.

From: "Demetri Kolokotronis" <[log in to unmask]>
> I do not understand "Put all your logical drives in the extended
> partition". As stated, logical drives are on master HD, which is 40G.
> Could not, even if I wanted, put logical drives of 40G master on 3.2G
> slave. Want to leave master partitions as is, C, D, and E, and make slave
> drive F. I  presume having only an extended partition on slave will do
> that, unless I am miss comprehending something. Thanks.
>
> Demetri Kolokotronis
>
> On Fri, 11 May 2001 05:39:34 -0400 Rick Glazier <[log in to unmask]>
> writes:
> > You need to wipe the drive clean. (Save your data somewhere.)
> > Get rid of the Primary partition, (and all other partitions).
> > (This is a "last in, first out" type of operation.)
> >
> > Set the drive up with NO primary partition, just one extended
> > partition.  Put all your logical drives in the extended partition.
> > (There may be a limit of 4, depending on the version of your
> > OS.)   Good luck,    Rick Glazier
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Demetri Kolokotronis" <[log in to unmask]>
> > > When I installed slave HD on second cable it became Drive D,
> > pushing my
> > > second and third partitions on master HD to E and F. If I get
> > slave HD
> > > installed as I want how can I make slave become Drive F instead of
> > D?

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