Tom's Guide | Tom's Hardware | Tom's Games
 |
 |
 |
I’m setting up a new system and am having drive letter problems. First, the specs:
Abit NF7-s & Athlon 2500
SCSI 160 ID 0: Segate 36 GB
SCSI 160 ID 1: Segate 36 GB
IDE Channel 1 Master: WD ATA/100 120 GB
IDE Channel 1 Slave: Empty
IDE Channel 2 Master & Slave: DVD ROM drives
Target OS: Windows XPThe problem is that I want to install the OS onto the SCSI 0 device (as the C: drive), and use the SCSI 1 and the IDE drive as data drives. However, when I start to load Windows XP off of the CD, it assigns drive letters as follows:
C: ATA/100
D: SCSI 1 (first partition)
E: SCSI 0
F: SCSI 1 (second partition)How can I force the SCSI 0 drive into the C: slot BEFORE I install the OS?
I considered simply disabling the other drives until the OS is installed (thereby forcing the SCSI 0 device to C: because it would be the only drive in the system) but I’m worried that once I reinstall the other drives, they would again assume the drive assignments listed above, my system drive could be bumped to a new drive letter, and all heck would break loose because the system paths would have changed.
Please help.
disconnect all noot needed drives during the instalation and then plug them in after if you have any problems after that use the drive manager in windows to change the letters of the drive you will have to restart every time u change a letter. oh and 4 a tip keep one of the scsi drives in 4 one reason when installing a windows os it is beter that the system detect and automaticly instal the swap file on the fasts drive other then the main drive so u don't eat up acces speeds on the main drive :) have fun :)
0 
Okay, so I do the above, install the OS on the only remaining drive (SCSI ID 0, now designated c:), and then hook up the remaining drives. How do I ensure that my system drive retains its C: assignemnt? And if it does not retain its C: assignment, will the computer still boot now that OS is located in E:\Windows instead of C:\Windows? If I can't boot, then I can't use the Windows drive manager.
Thanks
0
if u know that conroler 0 on a scsi chain is bootable drive and your ata drive is not set to boot first then the os will s the drive on controler number 0 as c: )
oh and if u did not put the drive as 0 on the controler b4 then u should no it will never boot from any drive unless under controler number 0
0
If that is true, and given that my boot sequence is currently: Floppy, CD-ROM, SCSI, then why is the IDE drive assigned C: as mentioned above. I would think that it should be assigned last instead of first and that c: would be given to SCSI 0. Even so, my SCSI 0 is getting a higher assignment than my SCSI 1. I don't understand.
0
I'm not sure why XP setup works that way but I changed a couple of drives in my system and realised that XP works differently about the drive letters than older windows versions.
Even with the drives on another position the drive letter stays the same until I change it in XP.So I think it should work as described above!
0
drive letters are assigned to partitions. What you want to do is not disconnect the drives but remove all partitions from all drives except the scsi one. Once XP is installed you would then use XP to partition and format the drives. Then you can assign what drive letters you want.
Of course if you boot up on a boot disk the first ide drive will be c: no matter what XP might think.
0
hi again :) Look I understand what you are saying but I am not sure what level of understanding you have. So I am trying to put this in the easiest word I can think of. If you change the drive letters in xp after the drives system is installed you risk 2 thing.
1) your operating system might still store boot up information before cylinder 1024 on the ide controler and you would still be using the ide drive so if you ever removed it then the system would not work
2) if you remove the ide drive you can be assured that the operating system (OS) will install all files on the Small Computer System Interface (SCSI). Even an unformated un volumed drive can be used to store boot up info and if you removed all volume as said then you would have to delete everything as I asume u do not wish.
So here is what you do....
Get the ide drive out or disable it just don't let it run at any costs
then install the boot SCSI drive on SCSI controller "0" and the other SCSI drive on controller on any other controler you like except for "7" because that is the controler cards ID or any number higher then 7 because u might not have ultra wide.
Then install the OS and it will finally tell you that one SCSI on "0" is C:\ and the OS will even optimize your other drive with the swap file for you. If you don't know why it does that... don't ask just... I have told you already why.
I hope you understand this... if you don't believe me realize 2 thing...
I might not know everything because who does
BUT I DO HAVE MY A++ SO I KNOW WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT ;)
0
I've got a similar problem with my system.
The first time I installed 2000, I had two IDE drives on a raid controller (set to IDE) and a new 120GB SATA drive. Win 2000 saw the SATA driver first as it needed drivers for the raid - not a problem cause I wanted to boot of the SATA drive. I partitioned the SATA driver into one 10GB windows drive (C) and the remaining as another drive (D). Once windows was up and running, I copied info off the drives on the raid controller. Having got mucked about by the Blaster worm, I decided reinstalling would solve the most problems. I formatted C, leaving the D partition with data on it. On reinstalling, win2000 now sets the old "C" partition as "F" for some really wierd reason. How can I get it to set it as the normal C when it installs?
0
I just finished something quite similar, and I have it working jsut fine. I saw your post as I was looking for help myself.
My system is:
ASUS P4T533 w/P4 2.53 w/512MB RDRAM PC1066
Matrox Parhelia w/ "3" 19in Flat screens (3840x1024 desktop)
Adaptech AHA2940UW SCSI controller
G: SCSI 0 18GB 10K rpm (used for Swap space)
C: SCSI 1 18GB 10K rpm (Boot drive for XP Pro)
D: Primary Slave IDE 120 GB ATA for Data (not bootable, i.e no OPSYS installed)
L: Primary Master IDE 200 GB ATA for backup with front mount removeable tray also not bootable.
E: DVD Secondary Master
F: CD/RW Secondary Slave
+lots of other stuff not relavent here.To get the SCSI to be the boot drive, I needed to set up the Motherboard BIOS so that only SCSI was in the boot sequence. I also made sure that no OPSYS files were on either of the IDE drives. As I started with a 40GB IDE as the XP boot drive, I made a ghost image (Norton GHOST 2003) of the IDE which luckily fit on the 18GB SCSI with 5GB to spare. I loaded that ghost image on the SCSI #1. In your case this should be C: for a clean XP install. In the SCSI BIOS (Alt A at boot time) I specified that only SCSI 1 was a boot disk. In XP I needed to make sure that all disks were "BASIC" and not "DYNAMIC". As the SCSI is the only bootable device it gets assigned "C". All other drive letters can be adjusted in the Computer Management\Disk Management. It took me a few tries to get it but now I have my small fast drives for booting and launching my applications, and a good amount of disk space to back up all of my data, and for the rather large ghost images in case I hose the SCSI boot drive.
Hope this helps
Rick
0  |
 Only IBM hard disks rejec...
|
External drives not found
|
This post is quite old and has been locked from receiving new replies. Please create a new posting instead.
| Ads by Google |
