I ran into some problems, but have since worked them out. From lack of experience, I booted with my
boot disk, then started with cdrom support. This, of course, provided a virtual drive (I:) from
which to work, but it also seemed to cause drive letters to jump over I:\ and create J, K...etc.
After realizing my mistake, I rebooted without cdrom support, fdisked the 60gig, and created only an
extended dos partition using the entire drive. Then I was able to create 4 logical drives within the
extended dos partition, and format them each. Another mistake was that I thought I HAD to create a
primary dos partition, but realize that was not necessary - at least not on the slave. Anyway, I now
have the new drive as master with a primary dos partition, an extended dos partition and 3 logical
drives within the extended, so I ended up with C, D, E, and F all on the new drive, and G, H, I, and
J all on the old drive - nice and tidy, and all work fine. I also was indeed able to use 'Reserved
drive letters' in device manager to assign my cdrom and dvd drives as I had wanted. There's a couple
other questions I have if anyone cares to reply:

1.) I assume the master drive MUST have an active, primary dos partition - is that correct?
2.) Should my cdrom and dvd drives be given DMA in device manager?

Thanks a ton for everyone's help, and I apologize if the info you all supplied was covered on this
list many times - I just never have much luck searching the archives. Thanks again...

Al Thompson

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Gillett"
Subject: Re: [PCBUILD] New hdd & fdisk UPDATE


> On 1 Apr 2002, at 18:30, A&C Thompson wrote:
>
> > 1.) Must I create a primary dos partition on the 60gig, if so, how
> > big is necessary?

> snipped for brevity

>   A primary DOS partition is a single logical drive.  A drive can
> only have four "top level" partitions; if you want more, or you want
> them to come after the rest of the logical drives on the 40GB, then
> you will need an extended DOS partition.
>
> > 3.) How will the drive letters be affected - right now the new drive contains C, E, F, G, & H
and
> > the old drive is D.
>
>   I'm sure this is in the list archives, but the order goes:
>
> 1.  First primary DOS partition on first drive.
>
> 2.  First primary DOS partition on second drive.
>
> 3.  Logical drives within extended DOS partition on first drive.
>
> 4.  Logical drives within extended DOS partition on second drive.
>
> 5.  Remaining primary DOS partition(s) on first drive.
>
> ...
>
>   At the moment, you have partitions in steps 1, 2, and 3.  If you
> get rid of the partition at step 2, the ones from step 3 will all
> move up one letter.
>
> > Hypothetically, what would happen to my cdrom and dvd drive letters if I used all the letters
for
> > logical partitions?
>
>   That will depend on whether you've explicitly set them, or let the
> system assign them.
>
> > 4.) Finally, can I set the drive letters for my cdrom and dvd
> > drives as I want them? If so, how?
>
>   The exact mechanics depend on the OS.  In 9X, it's done in the
> Device Manager, in NT/2000 it's done through the Drive Manager or the
> "Administrative Tools" control panel.
>
> David Gillett

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