2 hard disks, many partitions

[Leo V]

Hello, I've just bought a Western Digital 6.4GB (EIDE) hard disk to add to my existing Quantum Fireball 2.5GB (also EIDE) disk. I plan to put the new disk as Primary Master, the old one as Primary Slave, and to re-partition both disks for best performance. The problem is that (of the dual-booted WinNT4 and Win98 that i'm using), Win98 sucks with two disks, as follows:
C: will always be the first partition of the Master disk;
D: will always be the first partition of the Slave disk, EVEN IF THE MASTER DISK HAS MORE THAN ONE PARTITION
Afterwards come all the remaining Master disk partitions, and finally all the remaining Slave disk partitions. For example, if my master disk has 4 partitions, and my slave disk has 3 partitions, you would get:
C: (master)
D: (slave)
E: (master)
F: (master)
G: (master)
H: (slave)
I: (slave)
I don't need THAT many partitions, but what kind of screwed-up drive letter assignment is this! This means that removing your slave disk will cause all the programs that are not on C: to freeze in their tracks, especially if I need to install Win98, as my second OS, on drive D:
Even though WinNT allows re-assigning the drive letters, i need consistent links and program data, so that programs can work under both OS's. So my question is whether there is a utility or any way to get Win98 to reverse the stupidity of this setup (to make all the master partitions appear first, and all the slave partitions second). Thanks.
--Leo V.

[Ziz]

Check the Boot Sequence options in your motherboard's BIOS. My Asus P2B has several combinations of booting from floppy, CD ROM, LS/Zip, and hard drive letters up to F or G. While this won't solve your drive letter assignment problems, it may make them easier to manage. You can choose which drive letters the machine will boot from and in what order.

But to answer the basis of your question, I don't think you have a choice. As far as I know, C and D have to be the respective first partitions on each physical drive.

If you find a way around this, let me know!

[CMonster]

Kind of microsoft isn't it?

Sorry, I know of no such utility, but with partition magic you can go a long way to taking control of your drive letter assignment by hiding partitions. Whether or not you can toggle a bootable flag on those hidden partitions I do not know.

The easiest way I can think of is to put your 2.5GB as one large partition as drive 'C' --primary master and partition your 6.4 to your heart's content.

[NgtCrwlr]

Hey Leo,

You question is taxing my memory, I haven't used partitions for so long. I used to have a pile when I had two 6.4GB drives prior to FAT32. I think you have two options, one is try partitioning the slave drive as one large extended partition, not a primary, then assign the logical drives to that partition. That is unless you boot from that drive. The second option to try is move your slave drive to the secondary IDE and set it up as a master drive. If my memory is correct, the partitions on the second drive should follow after the partitions on drive C:

You should end up with logical drives C:, D:, E, and F: on drive C: and your second drive should show up as G:, H:, and I: I THINK.

I do remember that I worked out a way that I could remove the second drive without disturbing the drive letter assignment, I just cannot say for sure how.

Here is a third option, just go with FAT32 and be done with it. IMO FAT32 is a godsend and the performance difference to me is nothing compared to the headache of partitions.

By the way, this is not a new problem in Windows98, it’s been this way for as long as I can remember.

Larry “NgtCrwlr” Mingus
www.makeitsimple.com (http://www.makeitsimple.com)

[bighammer]

you can remove the drive and winblows will rearrange your drive letters fine. The thing is, if you access a program at G: and now G: is gone, you have to go into the config. of the program and reassign the drive letter that is accessed.
{does that make sense?}
It does work though.
Before you do it, lock your cd rom to it's letter.
You know, device manager double click your cd and scroll to the letter you want it to stay at

[Leo V]

Thanks everyone. So far I think that NgtCrwlr has an interesting solution--partitioning the slave disk so it has NO primary partition. But now I ask, how do you do that? I THINK that FDISK makes you create a primary partition on a blank HD before you can make any other kind of partition. NgtCrwlr, can you (or anyone else) please tell me how to do this?
Thanks,
--Leo V.
PS: I already have FAT32, but I need to make C: FAT16 to have WinNT4 working (then it recognizes the other drives via a nt4/fat32 utility). Besides, I want another partition at the end (outer edge) of the slave disk for high-performance swapfiles.

[NgtCrwlr]

Hi Leo,

Let's see if I can help. When you fire up FDISK first choose display partition info on the drive (slave I assume) you want to work on. I always do this first to see the existing partitions and to make sure that I am on the right drive. If FDISK shows a primary or any extended partitions, go to the delete option and delete all extended partitions first, then delete the primary partition. Go back and display the partition info to make sure that everything is gone.

Now choose create extended partition and allot all cylinders (entire drive) to the extended partition. You do not need a primary partition. You will then be told that you have no logical drives, would you like to add them now. This is the point you will have to decide on how big you want each logical drive to be. Keep in mind that I am going by my memory recall, I have not used partitions for at least a year. Therefore, my instructions may not be totally accurate but, I think it will be obvious to you where and if I screwed up.

Most of the time, I setup my CD-ROM as drive M: This keeps the CD-ROM drive letter from screwing up the order of logical and physical HD’s. The CD-ROM will always be the same even when or if you remove your slave drive. This can be a great benefit for CD apps that have to access the CD. You may have to go to a higher letter if you have a ton of logical HD’s.

I already have FAT32, but I need to make C: FAT16 to have WinNT4 working (then it recognizes the other drives via a nt4/fat32 utility). Besides, I want another partition at the end (outer edge) of the slave disk for high-performance swapfiles.

You need to do some research on the effects of putting the swap file on a second drive. Things you need to consider, if the second drive is an IDE slave you may see a performance drop. This is because the IDE controller can only read from one drive at a time when both drives are on the same channel. Just putting the swap file in a partition of it’s own is not the key to guaranteed performance gain. I have played with just about every conceivable method. The only one worth the time IMO, is make a permanent swap file, use a utility like Norton, and move the swap file to the outer tracks. I used to put it on a second drive on the secondary IDE channel, which worked well, but I stopped doing that quite a while ago. The reason is I move drives between systems a lot. With the swap file on the second drive when you remove the second drive and reboot Win9x will recreate the swap file on C:. Then when you put the second drives back in you have to set it all up again. It just became too much of a hassle.

The best setup I have found is FAT32 and a drive C: permanent 150MB to 200MB swap file moved to the outer tracks with Norton. I understand you have a special circumstance with needing dual boot. Food for thought anyway.

Hope this helps, Leo.

Cheers!

Larry “NgtCrwlr” Mingus
www.makeitsimple.com (http://www.makeitsimple.com)

[Leo V]

Thanks a lot NgtCrwlr!! I got the old disk repartitioned just the way you said, and now both disks have 2 partitions. The big disk has now C: (WinNT) and D: (Win98), and the older disk has E: and F:, also the CD-ROM is now Z: This positively kicks ***, because I can now remove the second disk at will, with both OS's working. Thanks a lot for the help!
--Leo V.