Drive D: skipped, other letter used in stead.

When Windows assigns drive letters it looks for all primary partitions
first. If it finds a primary partition available it will assign a drive
letter ahead of any secondary partition. So the "D" drive is not getting
skipped, but rather it is getting included (with zero size) when it doesn't
(apparently) exist. It's not a question of overlooking a drive letter, it's
a question of including an extra partition that doesn't match the physical
drive setup that you believe to be the logical lettering for your system.

You stated that "Strange things happened: the d: disk was shown in Win98,
however
without a disk connected (size is 0) and the 3 GB disk was shown as drive e:
" where I now realize that the reference to no disk connected was your
description of the result, not the cause.

The same considerations apply - Do FDISK /Status for each drive in turn to
confirm the exact partitioning that the system sees for that drive in the
configuration that causes the problem. Double check that BIOS is properly
responding to drives that it examines, and that it adjusts (or is manually
adjusted) to any changed configuration. Delete IDE devices in Device
manager and allow Windows to re-detect them.

I believe you are going to find some unusual partitioning on one of the
drives which for some reason is detect differently between the two
configurations.
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User)
"RobH" wrote in message
...
Well, I hink that you are missing some of the info I gave:

With no drives connected to the Promise I had:

c: 2.5GB, Standard Primary Master
d: 3GB, Standard Primary Slave
e: DVD RW, Standard Secondary Master
f: DVD Rom, Standard Secondary Slave

When I reconnected 2 drives to the Promise I got:

c: 2.5GB, Standard Primary Master
d: 0
e: 3GB, Standard Primary Slave
f: 80GB, Promise Primary Master
g: 12.5GB, Promise Primary Slave
h: DVD RW, Standard Secondary Master
i: DVD Rom, Standard Secondary Slave

So, with the same disk connected in the same way and no additional
changes,
the letter d: was skipped in exactly the same set-up. And my question is
why
this letter is skipped, what may cause this phenomenon.

(When you got confused in my original setup the RW was on the Master and
not
on the slave as I istakely wrote in my original posting, but that does not
change anything)

Thanks, I will try these suggestions out this weekend. Will report back on
Monday!

(Sorry If I had you unintendedly on the wrong leg... :-( I am just Dutch,
explains maybe a lot)
====

"Jeff Richards" wrote:

When Windows assigns drive letters it looks for all primary partitions
first. If it finds a primary partition available it will assign a drive
letter ahead of any secondary partition. So the "D" drive is not getting
skipped, but rather it is getting included (with zero size) when it doesn't
(apparently) exist. It's not a question of overlooking a drive letter, it's
a question of including an extra partition that doesn't match the physical
drive setup that you believe to be the logical lettering for your system.

You stated that "Strange things happened: the d: disk was shown in Win98,
however
without a disk connected (size is 0) and the 3 GB disk was shown as drive e:
" where I now realize that the reference to no disk connected was your
description of the result, not the cause.

The same considerations apply - Do FDISK /Status for each drive in turn to
confirm the exact partitioning that the system sees for that drive in the
configuration that causes the problem. Double check that BIOS is properly
responding to drives that it examines, and that it adjusts (or is manually
adjusted) to any changed configuration. Delete IDE devices in Device
manager and allow Windows to re-detect them.

I believe you are going to find some unusual partitioning on one of the
drives which for some reason is detect differently between the two
configurations.
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User)
"RobH" wrote in message
...
Well, I hink that you are missing some of the info I gave:

With no drives connected to the Promise I had:

c: 2.5GB, Standard Primary Master
d: 3GB, Standard Primary Slave
e: DVD RW, Standard Secondary Master
f: DVD Rom, Standard Secondary Slave

When I reconnected 2 drives to the Promise I got:

c: 2.5GB, Standard Primary Master
d: 0
e: 3GB, Standard Primary Slave
f: 80GB, Promise Primary Master
g: 12.5GB, Promise Primary Slave
h: DVD RW, Standard Secondary Master
i: DVD Rom, Standard Secondary Slave

So, with the same disk connected in the same way and no additional
changes,
the letter d: was skipped in exactly the same set-up. And my question is
why
this letter is skipped, what may cause this phenomenon.

(When you got confused in my original setup the RW was on the Master and
not
on the slave as I istakely wrote in my original posting, but that does not
change anything)

As I said I have tried some of the suggestions out, and here are the results
so far.

First I reinstalled the 3GB disk and made sure that BIOS has the correct
settings.
FDISK did show the disk, however with an "unknown" file system. The RAMDISK
that I installed with starting in DOS mode was installed with the same letter
(D) as the 3GB disk... Under DOS the disk apparently was not detected (maybe
NTFS, although I am certain that I completely formatted it as a FAT32.... but
maybe there was some hidden partition) Fdisk also told me that there was only
one partition present.
So, since the content of the disk had already been backed up, primary
partition (having the volume name of the ramdisk...). Then I reinstalled a
primary partition on the disk with largest size. So far so good. Next I
completely formatted the disk, now it definitely has FAT32 as filesystem.
Restarted the PC with Win98 and all disks are OK, correct letters and sizes.
Since I wanted to use the D: drive for "My Documents" I re-copied tis
directory from the back-up. Still everything OK. Modified two files in My
Documents, copied them also to the backup drive.
Now comes the (again) puzzling part: my E:-drive became a zero-sized disk, I
could open it and see all content, however when I used "Properties" the size
of the disk was zero and the volume name was empty. All other drives were OK.
Refreshing the explorer did not change anything, restarting the computer
restored the original condition.
To be save I removed the the device driver from the Device manager and
restarted the computer. The same device driver seems to be installed (Disk
type 46).
For now I leave the 3GB disk in place, however, I am still worried about the
fact that the drive may be defective or having some hidden structure on it
that DOS, fdisk nor Windows is able to detect.
For your info: the disk is a Quantum Fireball ST, 3240AT that originally was
delivered with a DELL system. When I started using it it was known to have a
defective bootsector, so I figured I could still use it as a secondary
drive....

Since I still do not have the feeling that the problem has completely been
solved:
To be continued. For now thanks for all your help and if you still have
additional suggestions: please drop them!

"RobH" schreef:

Thanks, I will try these suggestions out this weekend. Will report back on
Monday!

(Sorry If I had you unintendedly on the wrong leg... :-( I am just Dutch,
explains maybe a lot)
====

The zero drive E may have been due to not re-booting after making changes.
I usually do this sort of disk management from DOS, with a fresh boot after
each change. I can't quite tell from your description whether this may have
something to do with it.

If the bootsector is damaged then it's possible that the system may be
having a problem reading the partition data from the disk - it depends on
just where the damage is and what effect it has on the boot procedure.
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User)
"RobH" wrote in message
news
As I said I have tried some of the suggestions out, and here are the
results
so far.

First I reinstalled the 3GB disk and made sure that BIOS has the correct
settings.
FDISK did show the disk, however with an "unknown" file system. The
RAMDISK
that I installed with starting in DOS mode was installed with the same
letter
(D) as the 3GB disk... Under DOS the disk apparently was not detected
(maybe
NTFS, although I am certain that I completely formatted it as a FAT32....
but
maybe there was some hidden partition) Fdisk also told me that there was
only
one partition present.
So, since the content of the disk had already been backed up, primary
partition (having the volume name of the ramdisk...). Then I reinstalled a
primary partition on the disk with largest size. So far so good. Next I
completely formatted the disk, now it definitely has FAT32 as filesystem.
Restarted the PC with Win98 and all disks are OK, correct letters and
sizes.
Since I wanted to use the D: drive for "My Documents" I re-copied tis
directory from the back-up. Still everything OK. Modified two files in My
Documents, copied them also to the backup drive.
Now comes the (again) puzzling part: my E:-drive became a zero-sized disk,
I
could open it and see all content, however when I used "Properties" the
size
of the disk was zero and the volume name was empty. All other drives were
OK.
Refreshing the explorer did not change anything, restarting the computer
restored the original condition.
To be save I removed the the device driver from the Device manager and
restarted the computer. The same device driver seems to be installed (Disk
type 46).
For now I leave the 3GB disk in place, however, I am still worried about
the
fact that the drive may be defective or having some hidden structure on it
that DOS, fdisk nor Windows is able to detect.
For your info: the disk is a Quantum Fireball ST, 3240AT that originally
was
delivered with a DELL system. When I started using it it was known to have
a
defective bootsector, so I figured I could still use it as a secondary
drive....

Since I still do not have the feeling that the problem has completely been
solved:
To be continued. For now thanks for all your help and if you still have
additional suggestions: please drop them!

As far as I can recollect I did the reboot (I usually do as well) after the
change, however after changing something in BIOS I must reboot. Changes on
DOS level I do by starting the PC in DOS (using the Rescue disk of Win98) and
not by opening a DOS wiondow in Win98, so also there I had to restart anyway.
Still Windows seems to play tricks with this 3GB disk.

As far as the FAT is concerned: you may be right, however I have been using
this disk for more than half a year without noticing problems. On the other
hand the 1.5 GB disk that I replaced gave me occasional "not there" problems,
the reason that I wanted to replace it in the first place.

Just occurred to me that I had this 3GB disk installed as last physical
drive immediately followed by two optical drives and four flash drives (due
to a card reader I have connected to the USB), maybe the problem has been in
the past but has been hidden because no physical disks were affected when the
next drive was unreadable.... (does this make sense, I am not sure, just
looking for an explanation)

Still, after installation of the 3GB disk, I worked for several hours
without any problem. I am still keeping the 1.5GB disk on standby just in
case. Coming evening I will find out...

Anyway: thanks Jeff for your support.

"Jeff Richards" wrote:

The zero drive E may have been due to not re-booting after making changes.
I usually do this sort of disk management from DOS, with a fresh boot after
each change. I can't quite tell from your description whether this may have
something to do with it.

If the bootsector is damaged then it's possible that the system may be
having a problem reading the partition data from the disk - it depends on
just where the damage is and what effect it has on the boot procedure.
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User)
"RobH" wrote in message
news
As I said I have tried some of the suggestions out, and here are the
results
so far.

First I reinstalled the 3GB disk and made sure that BIOS has the correct
settings.
FDISK did show the disk, however with an "unknown" file system. The
RAMDISK
that I installed with starting in DOS mode was installed with the same
letter
(D) as the 3GB disk... Under DOS the disk apparently was not detected
(maybe
NTFS, although I am certain that I completely formatted it as a FAT32....
but
maybe there was some hidden partition) Fdisk also told me that there was
only
one partition present.
So, since the content of the disk had already been backed up, primary
partition (having the volume name of the ramdisk...). Then I reinstalled a
primary partition on the disk with largest size. So far so good. Next I
completely formatted the disk, now it definitely has FAT32 as filesystem.
Restarted the PC with Win98 and all disks are OK, correct letters and
sizes.
Since I wanted to use the D: drive for "My Documents" I re-copied tis
directory from the back-up. Still everything OK. Modified two files in My
Documents, copied them also to the backup drive.
Now comes the (again) puzzling part: my E:-drive became a zero-sized disk,
I
could open it and see all content, however when I used "Properties" the
size
of the disk was zero and the volume name was empty. All other drives were
OK.
Refreshing the explorer did not change anything, restarting the computer
restored the original condition.
To be save I removed the the device driver from the Device manager and
restarted the computer. The same device driver seems to be installed (Disk
type 46).
For now I leave the 3GB disk in place, however, I am still worried about
the
fact that the drive may be defective or having some hidden structure on it
that DOS, fdisk nor Windows is able to detect.
For your info: the disk is a Quantum Fireball ST, 3240AT that originally
was
delivered with a DELL system. When I started using it it was known to have
a
defective bootsector, so I figured I could still use it as a secondary
drive....

Since I still do not have the feeling that the problem has completely been
solved:
To be continued. For now thanks for all your help and if you still have
additional suggestions: please drop them!

Glad to have been of some help. Fingers crossed it keeps running properly.
It would be nice to know exactly what the problem was all about, but
sometimes that's just not possible.
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User)
"RobH" wrote in message
...
As far as I can recollect I did the reboot (I usually do as well) after
the
change, however after changing something in BIOS I must reboot. Changes on
DOS level I do by starting the PC in DOS (using the Rescue disk of Win98)
and
not by opening a DOS wiondow in Win98, so also there I had to restart
anyway.
Still Windows seems to play tricks with this 3GB disk.

As far as the FAT is concerned: you may be right, however I have been
using
this disk for more than half a year without noticing problems. On the
other
hand the 1.5 GB disk that I replaced gave me occasional "not there"
problems,
the reason that I wanted to replace it in the first place.

Just occurred to me that I had this 3GB disk installed as last physical
drive immediately followed by two optical drives and four flash drives
(due
to a card reader I have connected to the USB), maybe the problem has been
in
the past but has been hidden because no physical disks were affected when
the
next drive was unreadable.... (does this make sense, I am not sure, just
looking for an explanation)

Still, after installation of the 3GB disk, I worked for several hours
without any problem. I am still keeping the 1.5GB disk on standby just in
case. Coming evening I will find out...

Anyway: thanks Jeff for your support.

Yesterday evening I decided to replace my 3GB drive by the 7GB drive. The
system has been working without any problem ever since the 13th, so the
solution implemented at that moment was the ultimate workaround. (I only had
shutdown delays I could not get rid of).

On replacing the disks I noticed the following behaviour:
As long as the 7GB drive was connected to the Promise IDE Controller it was
recognized as being FAT32 formatted. I connected it to the primary IDE
controller (as slave) and corrected the BIOS as appropriate. Started up in
DOS mode (using the Win98 rescue disk, not from Windows). The RAMDrive got a
wrong drive letter, the harddisks on C:, D:, E: and F:, RAMDrive got letter
F: as well!. I started FDisk and checked: all drives recognized, only drive
D: (the 7GB drive) was not recognized as FAT32! I did not take any risk, so I
removed the primary partition (the only one) from the 7GB disk and
reinstalled a primary DOS partition. Rerstarted the PC in DOS mode and now
the RAMDisk got the letter G: as expected. Reformatted the 7GB disk and
checked with FDisk that the disk is recognized as FAT32 again. All works fine
now. Also I do no longer experience shutdown delays.

Conclusion: when formatting a disk (connected to the Promise controller)
from DOS the Promise 100TX2 card is not installing a real FAT32 but something
else that is translated into FAT32 on accessing it from Windows or DOS.

Case Closed as far as I am concerned.

"RobH" wrote:

I got a curious problem that puzzles me.

I have a PI 200MHz system with the following drive setup (2 drives and DVD's
with the standard IDE controller, 4 drives via a Promise ata100 TX2):
- c: 2.5 GB standard IDE primary master
- d: 1.5 GB standard IDE primary slave
- e: 7 GB Promise IDE primary master
- f: 12.5 GB Promise IDE primary slave
- g: 80 GB Promise IDE secondary master
- h: 3 GB Promise IDE secondary slave
- i: DVD Rom standard IDE secondary master
- j: DVD RW standard IDE secondary slave

This works well with Win98 SE.

Now I wanted to replace the 1.5GB d: drive with the 3GB I currently have as
h: drive. Strange things happened: the d: disk was shown in Win98, however
without a disk connected (size is 0) and the 3 GB disk was shown as drive e:
... So I disconnected all drives from the Promise card and now the 3GB drive
shows as drive d: ... Reconnecting the drives to the Promise card and again
d: was skipped but still shown in the list... I then replaced the original
1.5GB drive as primary slave and all was fine again...

The only thing I can imagine is that some drive information is stored by the
Promise card, however, without any additional drives connected to the Promise
card (still installed in the system) the 3 GB drive is correctly recognized
as d: so this is contradictionary.

Since I still want to replcae the 1.5GB drive (I use it for My Documents) I
was wondering if anyone knows the cause of this problem?

The issue is with the partitioning, not the formatting.

If you partition a drive using one controller, you cannot assume that the
partitioning will be correctly recognised when you move it to a different
controller - often it is, but sometimes it isn't. As a general rule you
should always prepare a disk when it is connected to the controller that you
intend to use it with.
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User)
"RobH" wrote in message
...
Yesterday evening I decided to replace my 3GB drive by the 7GB drive. The
system has been working without any problem ever since the 13th, so the
solution implemented at that moment was the ultimate workaround. (I only
had
shutdown delays I could not get rid of).

On replacing the disks I noticed the following behaviour:
As long as the 7GB drive was connected to the Promise IDE Controller it
was
recognized as being FAT32 formatted. I connected it to the primary IDE
controller (as slave) and corrected the BIOS as appropriate. Started up in
DOS mode (using the Win98 rescue disk, not from Windows). The RAMDrive got
a
wrong drive letter, the harddisks on C:, D:, E: and F:, RAMDrive got
letter
F: as well!. I started FDisk and checked: all drives recognized, only
drive
D: (the 7GB drive) was not recognized as FAT32! I did not take any risk,
so I
removed the primary partition (the only one) from the 7GB disk and
reinstalled a primary DOS partition. Rerstarted the PC in DOS mode and now
the RAMDisk got the letter G: as expected. Reformatted the 7GB disk and
checked with FDisk that the disk is recognized as FAT32 again. All works
fine
now. Also I do no longer experience shutdown delays.

Conclusion: when formatting a disk (connected to the Promise controller)
from DOS the Promise 100TX2 card is not installing a real FAT32 but
something
else that is translated into FAT32 on accessing it from Windows or DOS.

Case Closed as far as I am concerned.

Which makes me worried. This would mean that upgrading a motherboard does not
guarantee that the content of a disk with real content (not programs but the
actual user stuff) is readable. Although making regular backups is a must,
you would expect that a disk, once partitioned and formatted, need not be
re-partitioned and re-formatted when the IDE controller changes due to a
configuration change.
This would enforce upgrading only with compatible chip-sets!

Does this make sense or am I talking nonsense?

"Jeff Richards" wrote:

The issue is with the partitioning, not the formatting.

If you partition a drive using one controller, you cannot assume that the
partitioning will be correctly recognised when you move it to a different
controller - often it is, but sometimes it isn't. As a general rule you
should always prepare a disk when it is connected to the controller that you
intend to use it with.
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User)

That's just what it means. However, it's not the chipset that determines the
compatibility, but the BIOS. The problem is most likely when the systems
implement enhanced functionality through BIOS functions. A configuration
change in the controller, such as LARGE to LBA, will invariably require
re-partitioning and re-formatting.
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User)
"RobH" wrote in message
...
Which makes me worried. This would mean that upgrading a motherboard does
not
guarantee that the content of a disk with real content (not programs but
the
actual user stuff) is readable. Although making regular backups is a must,
you would expect that a disk, once partitioned and formatted, need not be
re-partitioned and re-formatted when the IDE controller changes due to a
configuration change.
This would enforce upgrading only with compatible chip-sets!

Does this make sense or am I talking nonsense?