Switching primary IDE cable to secondary slot, and visa versa, and adding a 3rd Hard Drive

January 25, 2008

Switching primary IDE cable to secondary slot, and visa versa, and adding a 3rd Hard Drive

On this older computer I somehow have on the Secondary IDE cable/slot the hard drive with C,D,E partitions. The Primary

IDE cable/slot has the hard drive with G,H,I,J,K partitions. Don't ask me how, but F shows up (using Ztree to view it)

as a mapped partition on my other computer. F doesn't show up in My Computer, although other mapped partitions do.

Only two computers on my LAN.

I'm now about to add a 3rd and larger hard drive and I'd like to get this all straightened out before I put it into the

mix.

First question is: if I move the cable so that the C,D,E hard drive is plugged into the Primary IDE slot, will these

partitions still be C,D, and E? And same with the other hard drive, will the partitions retain their current letters.

Since it was originally set up this way, I'd guess that Win2000 retains the partition letters once they are assigned.

Is this correct?

Also, currently the CD ROM drive shares the Primary IDE cable with the G,H,I,J,K hard drive.

Second question: what would be the best way to set up and place these drives after I add the third.

C,D,E drive is 40 GB

G,H,I,J,K drive is 80 GB

new drive is 160 GB

I've read that the drive that shares a cable with a CD ROM will have it's transfer speed limited by the speed of the CD

ROM. Is this a significant factor. And how would I handle this.

Thanks for any opinions and advice on this.

jc

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