W98 HDD recognition

[bhc92]

I have just been given a Compaq Presario running W98. The HDD is almost at capacity so I added an additional HDD (6.2Gb). The problem I have is that the machine knows its there but I cannot assign it a drive letter, i.e. I cannot access it.
I have looked for a diskmgmt.msc type function in W98 but no luck. Device manager recognises it, but as I say I cannot assign.

R

[Paul Komski]

If this is a new hdd it needs to be partitioned and formatted before you will be able to see and use any partitions on it. You cannot in any case designate drive letters under Win98 - they will be assigned dynamically.

If partitioning a second drive using fdisk from a boot floppy then take care to select the correct drive before going ahead since if you are not careful you could wipe all the stuff off your old hdd.

[delete]

well if u have the choice i would make the 6.2 Gb hdd the bootdrive.
The extra space will help ur OS. With a 2 gb hdd ur soon to hit the max of your hdd, when the swapfile space becomes very little, your pc will slow down.
Also i would make only a extended/secundair partition(s) on the 2 Gb.
Then u can assign the 2 Gb drive any letter u want. If i remember correctly u can not assign a drive letter to a primairy partition.

[Paul Komski]

If i remember correctly u can not assign a drive letter to a primairy partition.
You cannot assign drive letters to any hdd partitions under Win98 - they are all assigned dyamically.

Under Win2K/XP you can assign drive letters to any partitions (primary or logical) EXCEPT the system partition and the boot partition. The system partition is usually the C drive and is the active primary partition. The boot partition is the partition holding the Windows folder and can be on a primary or a logical partition.

Also i would make only a extended/secundair partition(s) on the 2 Gb.
An extended partition is a special type of primary partition and is not secondary - a term not used to describe any fat or ntfs partitions. It is a primary partition because it is listed in one of the four partition table references in the mbr. It never has a drive letter and is merely is a container partition for virtually any number of logical partitions.

[delete]

Tnx for clearing that up.
That is what i meant tho :)
Only i messed/mixed up with the names. Sorry !
Point i wanted to make, if not needed dont make a boot partition on your 2nd hdd. Cause first those get assigned a driveletter. Which leaves u out of options if u dont want that...
It has been so long, the last time i used fdisk...

[Paul Komski]

delete I'm sure you know what you meant but, as was pointed out to Alice in Wonderland, saying what you mean and meaning what you say are two different things.

Those that are familiar only with the dos-based versions of windows do not immediately realise that the nt-based versions (win2K/XP) organise their disk and partition management very differently. In particular these OSes remember drives and partitions that have previously been accessed and store this information in the registry. This enables a certain flexibility in changing (or even removing) drive letters.

The Win9X versions assign letters dynamically at boot-time and I think the point you were trying to make is that C, D, E, etc are first assigned to the first (or to the only active partition) on each hard drive before assigning letters to logical partitions. The problem can then be that when you add a second hdd with a primary partition this will now be assigned the letter D and any logical volumes on the first drive will be bumped up by one. If you only have logical partitions on the second drive then the drive letters on the first drive remain unchanged when you add/remove the second hdd. Under WinXP you can add/remove a second HDD and the drive letters on the first hdd will never be changed.