W'98 SE drive letters--> - Page 2

PresterJohn · 02-23-2002, 05:42 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Inanis
All the primaries are listed first, then all the extended partitions . .. . . Thats just the way it is.

nope, there is a way around it (as outlined above)...it did a few years back on my last win98 machine.

reddog, dunno why you are having problems...can you please list the procedure you're doing.

reddog4629 · 02-23-2002, 05:46 PM

This new drive has only one active primary dos partition. I delete that.
Then when I try to create an extended partition (option 2) it says you have to create a primary first.
Any primary stuff on this drives defeats the purpose.

PresterJohn · 02-23-2002, 05:48 PM

is the new drive hooked up as the master (drive1) or the slave(drive2)?

reddog4629 · 02-23-2002, 05:50 PM

Master and the cdrw is slaved off of it.

PresterJohn · 02-23-2002, 05:52 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by reddog4629
Master and the cdrw is slaved off of it.

ahh, there's your problem!

you need to attach the 2nd drive as a slave to the 1st drive (they need to be on the same ide cable).

PresterJohn · 02-23-2002, 05:54 PM

once you're done fdisk & formatting that second drive as extended you can switch it back to master on the 2nd ide channel.

reddog4629 · 02-23-2002, 05:55 PM

The main HD(2 x 20GB) is a Raid0 striped settup through a Promise PCI controller. It's partitioned as drive c and d.
You're saying I need to set the new (3rd) HD as slave and the cdrw as master? What difference would that make to fdisk?
And when I run fdisk the other hd's are disconnected.

Ed_S · 02-23-2002, 06:10 PM

There's the prob! Fdisk won't allow this on the only drive in a system. An active primary partition MUST exist.
It will allow this on a secondary master. (3rd HD) I've done it.

On multiple drive setups, another menu choice appears in fdisk - "select drive"

PresterJohn · 02-23-2002, 06:14 PM

>And when I run fdisk the other hd's are disconnected

well you never mentioned that in your previous post...which is why i asked you to list the steps you were doing. giving incomplete info makes it hard to help you.

based on your last sentence, you're saying that you disconnected all the drives from the controller except for the new one. if that's the case, then sure, you WON'T be able to format that as extended using fdisk since fdisk needs to recognize at least 1 dos partition (on the system) before it will let you created an extended partition.

reddog4629 · 02-23-2002, 06:16 PM

Aaaahhh-I see the light now.

I will try that but it will be tommorrow. Thanx guys.