Drive Letter Assignment

[rkmca]

I suppose its a system question. My HDD is connected to Promise Ultra100 card in a PCI slot, cd-rom/cd-rw is connected to MOBO IDE's, both as Master. The funny thing is whenever I connect the ZIP drive as SLAVE to either one of cd drive, the drive letter assignment for ZIP is "B". But if I connect the ZIP as a SLAVE to HDD its drive letter is "D". As far as I know "B" is designated FLOPPY letter assigment, then why ZIP drive has been assigned "B" when its slave to cd-rom ?

Connection Type I :
Floppy --> A:
HDD to Promise as Master --> C:
CD-ROM Primary IDE Master --> D:
ZIP as Slave --> B:
CD-RW Secondary IDE Master --> E:

Connection Type II :
Floppy --> A:
HDD to Promise as Master --> C:
ZIP as Slave --> D:
CD-ROM Primary IDE Master --> E:
CD-RW Secondary IDE Master --> F:

Anyone please explain why the ZIP drive has been assigned the wrong drive letter with the 1st connection ?

Thanks


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RM

[spondylolisthesis]

Hey, I hope this helps.

The Zip 250/100 instruction manual I have recommends against installing the drive as a slave to the HDD, for what reason I don't know. So I would stay away from that. (it will also slow down your HDD)

-and---

It also recommends that you program your BIOS not to initialize it (by selecting "none" in the appropriate field).

In my setup the zip is a slave to the CD-ROM but my BIOS also is programmed to initialize it. That way, it can be a bootable drive (which is faster than floppy).

If I boot to the OS, then it is configured by the OS to have the expected letter, and if I boot to DOS, then it is drive B.

So to me it looks like it is just the difference in the way Windows and DOS assigns drive letters, with some dependence on the BIOS as well.