New Drive/Bad "Drive Letter" Assignment

[Beemer]

I have Win98/Y2K/XP all on the same box.
I want to install another HDD but the problem is with Win98. Win98 will take the first partion on the new drive and make it {D:} drive. And of course this will push all my drive letter assignments one letter forward. All my programs are loaded on {G:} so my programs in Win98 will not work. I don't like using drive mapper.

I want to have all my O/S's look the same with respect to drive letter configuration in Windows Explorer.

Is there a way of changing the drive letter of the new drive to {I:} in Win98.

This {D:} drive behavior isn't experienced in WinY2K or XP so they are fine.

Cheers!

[meese]

Beemer,

Below is a batch file that runs an older DOS PCB layout program. Even though its a DOS program, it does the job. I run it on W2K pc's. When I first installed it I installed it on the E: partition. So the subst command tricks the pc into thinking the c:\orc folder is the E: drive. Maybe this command can work for you?



c:
cd\
SET ORCADEXE=e:\ORCADEXE\
SET ORCADESP=e:\ORCADESP\
SET ORCADPROJ=e:\pa\
SET ORCADUSER=e:\ORCADESP\
SET GTPATH=e:\ORCADEXE


subst e: c:\orc
path e:\orcadexe;c:\winnt\system32;c:\winnt\system;
doskey
c:\orc\orcadexe\ORCAD

[Jarhed7276]

Beemer,

If you are not planning on making the new hd bootable do not make the first partition on the new hd active and it will not come in as D:\.

Gerry

[Beemer]

Batch files? Latin to me.

Just leave the drive alone and I'll have no problems I guess.

I can't my HDD until about a week from now. The specials were all last week appearently. I have to wait until the next batch of 80gig, ata100 7200rpm 8MB cache, drives come into Future Shop.

Thanks guys.

Cheers!

[Beemer]

Well. Here's an update.

I purchased a WD 160gig ATA100.

Win98 did see the new drive as D: as I expected. This is very undesirable with my multi boot config.

Win98/Y2K/XP all see it as being 149gig's. This is expected.

The drive is set to Active. I tried to change the status with fdisk with no joy.

The motherboard is a A7V KT133 with Primary and Secondary ATA controllers as well as standard controllers. Secondary and Primary. The drive is on the Secondary ATA as Master, & single on the IDE.

If the Active status is making it show as D: , how can I change the Active status?

How can I apply the batch file if this is my only option?

Cheers!

[Jarhed7276]

Hi Beemer,

It's been a while since I've use fdisk so this is from memory ( I use Partition Magic 8, best 60 bucks I ever spent on software).
I think you will need to repartition and format the new drive. Option 2 is to set the active partition. Do not set any partition as active.
Win98 should automatically set your optical drive(s) as the last drive letter(s). In Win2k/XP you may have to set them manually through disk management otherwise your new hd will be assigned drive letters after your optical drive(s).

Gerry

[Beemer]

No problems with Y2K/XP. It's Win98. I used the Lifeguard utility that came with the drive and it set the drive to Active without my permission.

I used fdisk to review the status and tried to use the option 2 to remove the Active status but it said that only one drive can be set to Active. Well I have news for fdisk.

How do you remove the Active status when both drives are set to Active?

Cheers!

[Jarhed7276]

Beemer,

I don't believe you can deactivate a partition once it has been made active. You need to repartition and format the hd without setting any partition as active using fdisk. To use fdisk on a hd that large you will need the updated version of fdisk. You can get it from MS's website by searching for Q263044 and downloading it from the bottom of the page.

Gerry

[meese]

Beemer,

Power Quest also makes a program called Drive Copy. One of the things you can do is "Hide" a partition. When you do this the BIOS does not see the partition. What I'm thinking is you can hide one partition, then De-activate the other partition, then un hide the hidden partition.

[nukes]

Simply, if you don't want it to take that drive letter, put it at the end of the chain so its set up last, i.e. secondary slave on the second controller.