Locking Drive Designations

I have two SATA 2 HDDs, one as the primary boot up drive. No RAID. The Primary is C: and the second is D:

Earlier today, I plugged in a USB Zip 100 drive and it knocked the second HDD off the radar and it only came back after I unplugged the HDD SATA cable and reattached it hot.

I remember in W98SE that one could lock the drive designation in order to prevent this from happening. However, I could not find this option in XP Pro. Did I miss that check box?

Thanks, Lar

 

Use Disk Management:
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/.../proddocs/en-us/dm_drive_letter.mspx?mfr=true

However, the issue is the ZIP drive, which XP's Mount Manager is treating as a hard disk drive. Update any ZIP drivers you are using.

This is the drive you want to assign a high alphabetic drive letter to; or in the alternative if necessary, move your optical drive to a high drive letter to free up low alphabetic letter space.

For example, if your moved your optical drive to O:, When you installed the ZIP drive it would enumerate as D: You would then move it to E:, and your SATA drive from F: to D:

The PnP drive enumerator under XP works in sometimes mysterious ways: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q82566889400897&pgno=2&queryText=

 

Hi Bill, I think that you are saying that there is nothing that I can do about it. Right?

Only the Primary Drive and my 2 optical drives are set (static). The secondary HDD is fair game to be booted off of D:. So, you suggest that I manually move these 3 drives up the alphabet and mayble leave D: available for such an occurence. Thereby making the Zips drive assignment predictable.

Am I correct, though, that W98 did allow for static assignment of any drive or non-removable device?

Thanks, Lar

 

Try:

• Move your optical drive to O: using Disk Manager;
• Install the ZIP drive; it enumerates as D:
• You would then move ZIP to E: using Disk Manager,
• Finally, move your SATA drive from F: to D:
• Alternatively, the careful can do this with regedit:
  http://support.microsoft.com/?id=kb;en-us;Q223188

References:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=304776
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=307844
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=kb;en-us;Q223188

 

Hi Bill, I see what you are up to here. This would work if the Zip is a permanent install. If it is only occassionally used via an external Zip, it would get repetetive, yes?

I like your idea of getting out of XP's way, then do what is necessary. Makes a lot of sense for this late in the day (esp in MD).

Thanks a lot! Lar

 

If the ZIP device is USB, you could use the USB Device Manager:
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html