Hard Drive Problem

[winky]

I recently bought a Maxtor 15 gig hard drive to add to my system, last night when I got around to doing it and went to formating and partitioning it I ran into a problem. The software included by maxtor for this purpose tried to assign letters D and G to the 2 partitions, but my Western Digital HD already uses C,D,E, and F. So I went ahead and tried it and it bumped my D,E,F and new G partion back a letter so the new D partion could fit in whick just screwed up all of my software installed on other drives than C. This is really pissing me off and I have tried quite a few differnt methods but none have worked, please help me?

My system is as follows:
Abit BE6-2
Western Digital 15.3gig HD and Maxtor 15gig HD
Geforce Graphics card
128 meg memory
etc.

[3fingersalute]

I assume you are running 95 or 98, so unfortunately, what you are dealing with here is a limitation of FDISK, and there is nothing you can do about it. The primary partition of each drive must go in order, for example if you were to add a 3rd drive, its first partition would HAVE to be E, and so on. Unless you are running NT, you cannot pick what drive letters you want, so unfortunately, you just have to deal with it, and if you need to adjust your software, get ready to start hacking the registry!!

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[email protected]

[theBeast]

Yeah, FDISK has a limitation with primary partitions. Primary partitions must go in order (C,D,E...), extended partitions will follow according to the drive.
For example if you have 2 HDs, both divided into 3 partitons, you'll end up with
Drive 1: C, E, F
Drive 2: D, G, H
If you want to get around this, install NT, and it will let you change the drive letters. MS wasn't too smart when they made FDISK.

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***the Beast
- Fate drove me here...then told me to get out of the car...

[Ruslan]

Agree with theBeast. Fdisk cann't do what You want.
But there is another excellent partitioning utility - PowerQuest Partition magic 4(5).
You can set Your HDD up without primary partition at all on Your second drive, only as extended partition with logical drives,what You want to create.
Primary active partition have to be present on first HDD to boot from it.
Then drive letter will be assigned in right order.
I hope this help You.

[FU_MAN]

Do not put a primary partition on the new drive. Make then extended/logical and the letters will be added to the end of the list. You can do this using Fdisk but I am not sure how to using a software utility that came with the HDD

[FU_MAN]

the article is Q255867 in Microsofts database

[Lord_FiQh]

If you've already accepted the drive letter assignments that replaced your "D" drive, you could fix the associations with Windoctor (part of System Works).

... no bashing re:Symantec/Norton, please!

[WhiteWolf69]

Easy solution for this is Partition Magic. It has a program that will look though your whole system and reassign drive letters to where they need to be, so every thing operates like it use to, before you added the new hard drive. I've used it many of times and it has saved me from trouble many of times.

[Hlodh]

MS wasn't too smart when they made FDISK.

I really don't think MS was too smart when they made DOS, NT, 95, 98, 2000, Office, Internet Explorer, or Exchange. But how about that MS Sidewinder Joystick? Pretty cool in my book! Works great with NESTICLE and GENECYST as well as MAME. MS is definitely one of the best joystick/mouse companies out there.
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I sing and play guitar, and I have A WARDROBE FULL OF FIRE!

[This message has been edited by Hlodh (edited July 27, 2000).]

[winky]

Is there a place I can get a copy of Partition Magic without buying it, a trial version?

[NeuromancerIV]

https://www.order.powerquest.com/retaildemos/partitionmagic/index.html


this is the demo, its pretty big, hope you have broadband access or are very patient!
sorry the link wont work without the https://
'frith!




[This message has been edited by NeuromancerIV (edited July 27, 2000).]

[shawnMt]

corrected link :
https://order.powerquest.com/retaildemos/partitionmagic/index.html

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Cannot find REALITY.SYS. Universe halted

Paint your old laptop!

[winky]

This is only a demo, and as Power Quest States on there Website;
"A demo is a nonfunctioning demonstration of what the program can do. For example, the demo for Lost & Found will show you which of your files can be recovered, but will not allow you to actually recover files." Were can I get a copy I can actually use to fix my HD problem?