assigning static drive letters

I want to add a second HD to my computer running WIN XP Home. The main drive has 2 partitions C and D. C contains WIN XP in NTFS and D contains a Compaq backup in FAT32. There is also a DVD/CD Reader and a CD writer, which have letters E and F. I do not want any of these letters to change when I add the new drive and I have read that Disk Management in WIN XP can statically fix these drive letters, but I have not been able to find any documentation on how to statically fix these drive letters. Anyone know how to do this. Many thanks.
Also any suggestions on how I should format and partition this new 200GB drive? Will WIN XP Home be able to see all 200GB?

 

You can assign drive letters in XP by using the Disk Management utility. Read here:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307844&Product=winxp

Use NTFS, that way, regardless of the partition size you use, your cluster size will always stay the same. Otherwise, with FAT32, your cluster sizes are going to be extremely large and you'll end up with a lot of slack space on that HDD.

Make sure that your BIOS is capable of seeing the full capacity of the 200 GB drive. If not, you can flash your BIOS if it's a fairly recent motherboard/PC - like 2-3 years old. Otherwise, don't bother. Instead you'll need to use a new ATA controller card - like I did.