[H-GEN] confusion re device namings

[Michael Anthon]

[ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and
Unix-related topics. ]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Hilton Travis [mailto:QuarkComputers at email.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, 29 September 1999 9:03 AM
> To: general at lists.humbug.org.au; general at lists.humbug.org.auSpecial
> Subject: RE: [H-GEN] confusion re device namings
<snip>
> Under MS-DOS versions up to and including 7.x the drive 
> letters are mapped
> like normal (drive 0 pri 0, drive 1 pri 0, drive 0 log 0, 
> drive 0 log 1,
> drive 1 log 0).  Under the Win9x GUI, this is how it is done; 
> drive 0 pri 0,
> drive 1 pri 0, drive 0 log 0, drive 0 log 1, drive 1 log 0, 
> drive 0 pri 1,
> drive 1 pri 1).  Invconsistency is the one constant 
> throughout the Microsoft
> range, and shown again in this example!!!
> 
<snip>
This has not been my experience.  I have run pretty much all flavours of
Win9x and they all map the drives using the same, terribly annoying, DOS
method (i.e. IDE0.1, IDE1.1, IDE0.2-IDE0.n, IDE1.2-IDE1.n[1]).  I have a
removable hard drive cradle that I use for moving a standard IDE hard drive
between work and home (much cheaper and more storage than a ZIP drive 8^)
and this has the rather nasty side effect of relettering the second
partition on the primary drive from D: to E:.  The only way I have managed
to get around this is to remove the drive from the BIOS settings and not let
the drive be detected by the BIOS. This way, the DOS portion of Winblows
starts up and letters the partitions of the visible primary disk the same
way each time (eg. C: and D:), once the GUI portion boots, it seems to
detect the extra drive itself and then adds any partitions after the ones on
the primary.  The other neat trick is to mark the drive as removable media,
in which case you can (sometimes[2]) force the partitions to a certain range
of letters.

Personally, I find the Linux method much easier to follow.  As a side note,
I've always found it rather amusing that the DOS version of fdisk is not
able to delete NT fdisk created partitions, usually with the errors to the
effect "Can't delete partition since it contains logical partitions" but you
can't delete the logical partitions because fdisk reckons there isn't any
there *shrug*.  To get around this, I normally boot off a linux install disk
and use the fdisk therein to clear the partitions 8^)

Cheers
Michael Anthon

[1] Can't remember what happens with a 3rd and 4th IDE drive, I think they
come after the first 2 as IDE2.1-IDE2.n, IDE3.1-IDE3.n
[2] I say this because on a couple of systems, even with no BIOS knowledge
of the drive and the drive marked as removable, the option to set the drive
letters just never gets enabled *shrug*... The wonders of Windows never
cease to amaze me.

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