At 10:11 5/24/99 , Brad Boutwell wrote:
 >I just installed a 20 GB HD (4 partitions - 1@2 GB, 3@6 GB). I have
 >a 6GB (2 partitions - 1@2GB, 1@4GB) as a slave on the same IDE channel
 >(as slave). This is the problem, the OS (BIOS???) assigns drive letters
 >as follows: MASTER: C, E, F, G  & SLAVE: D, H.  How do I make the
 >assignments sequential? The new drive is much faster and I plan to use
 >the 6GB for archival purposes only. I want the 2 partitions (which I
 >plan to combine) on the 6 GB to be last.

The partitions will be sequential (C, D, E, F on drive one, G and H on
drive two) if you partition drive two so that it has *no* primary
partition. Use Fdisk to delete everything on drive two (after backing up
your data of course) and then create only an extended partition. Then
create one or more logical volumes inside the extended partition.

The rule is that primary partitions (regardless of which hard disk
they are on) are assigned drive letters sequentially before any logical
volumes (the subdivisions of extended partitions). Logicals are assigned
drive letters after the primaries...in order, drive by drive. (This
applies to DOS and Win9X, and for all unhidden FAT (including FAT32)
volumes.) The exception is if there is more than one visible primary FAT
partition on a drive (a dangerous thing). Each of these would be
assigned letters after all the logical drives.

Like you, I like to have lots of partitions to keep my data
compartmentalized. (I have 19 FAT32 partitions on 6 drives). After a
while (and with the help of volume labels), I do remember what's in
each partition. I find Partition Magic 4 very useful in adjusting sizes
of partitions when necessary.

Regards,
Bill

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