windows + scsi + ide = headaches?

[cryogenic666]

I have a Tekram SCSI card with an 18GB Seagate Cheetah 36LP hard drive as my boot drive and two regular IDE devices. I've found that the only way to get my SCSI drive to become the C drive is to disconnect my two IDE drives when I go to install windows. Is this normal or am I really doing something wrong here? My BIOS is set to boot "bootable add-in cards" then IDE1 and IDE2 so I'm not quite sure why Windows keeps insisting on making IDE1/partition1 as C and making my SCSI drive my E drive. The only thing I can think of is that IDE1/part1 has previously had a windows installation on it (though it does not anymore) and perhaps windows is picking up something in the MBR? As it stands, the primary partition on IDE1 is actually marked as my "system" drive. Everything works as expected, but it was still more of a pain than I care to deal with. So for future reference, what am I doing wrong here? And how can I fix it so it's not such a pain the next time I have to install windows?

 

[ub3rnewb]

Go to control panel, then Administrative Tools, then Computer Management, then click storage, then click disk management. You can then right-click on drives and change their letters around however you want.

 

[cryogenic666]

I know about that, but Windows won't let you change the drive letter on the "system partition". Also, I would prefer that it just make my SCSI drive "C" from the beginning and not have to go through the trouble. In order to change the drive letter on the drive with Windows installed, there's a registry hack to do it. The point of the post was to figure out a way to avoid having to do all that.

 

[LiLithTecH]

Do you have the BOOT Device ID (usually defaults to SCSI ID 0)
set correctly in the SCSI card Bios?

If the Drive ID and the Default ID are different it will not boot off
the SCSI drive.

 

[nweaver]

Yes, I think windows defaults to ide, then scsi when picking drive letters. Downfall of windows is partition managment/drive letters. After learning *nix system, it's hard to go back to drive letters.

 

[cryogenic666]

It'll boot fine off the SCSI drive, I'm just complaining about Windows being retarded when assigning drive letters. It seems that the only way to get a SCSI drive as C: is to make sure it's the only drive connected. At that point, Windows has no choice but to make it C. And I do agree that setting up *nix in a mixed environment is so much easier.

 

[Goosemaster]

You are correct. Normally, for security and saftety reasons, I unplug everything but the system drive anyways.

This not only occurs with scsi but with IDE drives as well


The only real way to fix it is to format and unplug everythign else durign hte isntall.

It's not like they aren't detected and initiallized in a fraction of a secon when windows is up and running anyways