PCR wrote:
Bill in Co. wrote:
PCR wrote:
Bill in Co. wrote:
PCR wrote:

You didn't answer...

Is there any
confusion with drive letters when the thing is turned on/off--
does D:\ change to E:\ for instance?

I'm thinking strange things could happen to drive letters doing as
you do, by the rules of...

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=51978
Order in Which MS-DOS and Windows Assign Drive Letters

When the USB drive is off, as it normally is, I have my normal two
internal hard drives (each having 2 partitions) show up as C:, D:,
and E:, F:.

When the USB external HD is turned ON, I get an additional G: and
H:., (just as expected). So the internal IDE drives get enumerated
first, followed by the ATAPI interface one (my USB one), which I
believe is standard procedure.

I see! That is very good, if it doesn't upset the order of the letters
assigned to the permanent drives.

But I've only turned the USB drive on after bootup (I mean in Windows), and
haven't checked it otherwise, since I really have no need to. It's only
being used as a backup.

Very good, then. It could be just that
you have a fortunate partition arrangement that would cause the USB
device to enumerate nice as it does, for instance...

HDD0: 1 Primary & 1 Extended
HDD1: Same as that
USB: All Extended

Or it must have something to do with those USB drivers, that they are
last no matter as you suspect. I guess then somehow they follow rule
7...

....Quote the article.........
7. After all logical drives on the hard disk(s) have been assigned drive
letters, drive letters are assigned to drives installed using DRIVER.SYS
or created using RAMDRIVE.SYS in the order in which the drivers are
loaded in the CONFIG.SYS file. Which drive letters are assigned to which
devices can be influenced by changing the order of the device drivers
or, if necessary, by creating "dummy" drive letters with DRIVER.SYS.
....EOQ the article.............

Incidentally, I've previously made my CD/DVD combo drive to be
configured as K:, and my ZIP drive as Z:, to avoid some of the
confusion with changing drive letters that would otherwise occur.

Yea. My own CD-R/W is W:\.