IDE Master/Slave set-up

[GP]

I have a new computer with the following setup:

Primary IDE Master ST3120026AS (120Gb)
Slave Not Installed

Secondary IDE Master ST3120026AS (120Gb)
Slave Not Installed

Third IDE Master Not Installed
Slave Not Installed

Forth IDE Master CD-RW
Slave DVD-RW

(I have RAID 0 + 1 capability but this has not been enabled/set-up)

So......Why does "computer management/Disk management" (XP Pro) show the following arrangement/Drive letters?:

Disk 0: (F) 111.78Gb NTFS Healthy (System)
Disk 1: (C) 111.78Gb NTFS Healthy (Boot)
CD ROM 0: (D)
CD ROM 1 (E)

Specifically I'd like to know:

1. Why they're not named in the order C,D,E,F?

2. Why aren't the System and Boot partitions together on the same HDD?

3. My system works fine but will this set-up cause potential problems in the future?

Thanks for any enlightenment

GP

 

[rezurrectme]

What kind of motherboard do you have? Does it have four IDE channels?

 

[ekÆsine]

i find it funny you have 2 identical 120GB hard disk but you do not use raid, hehe. anyways to your question, i think possible you have set your active partition to a partition on the "Disk 1: (C) 111.78Gb NTFS Healthy (Boot)".

i have no clue what the heck you mean by "boot" and "system" since those mean the same thing to me. your boot order is inefficient which will cause a tiny bit of lag at POST but you will not run into problem.

when the BIOS cannot find something to boot from from C: it will go on to the next boot device until it finds something to boot from.

right click your "my computer" icon and select "manage". click storage>> disk management. right click on the partition that has the operating system installed on it and select "mark partition as active"....oh damn it that's for winXP and win2000 only i think.

for win98 or win95 you can do it using the startup disk and booting that up. you would have to use fdisk and set the correct partition as active.

within disk management you can right click on a drive and select "change drive letters" this is winXP and 2000 only.

 

[chesman]

i do ot see how you can have more then 2 ide masters and 2 slaves considering that you can only attach up to 4 ide ddvices per controller, unless you have an extra copntroller card, and i dont even think i know if that will work.

and you have a raid mobo? so do i, the other two ide connections are if you have your ide devices hooked up in a raid array. So if you have 4 devices hooked up, one for each ide connector on the board, i dontknow how this is working, becuasei was under the impression that i hadto use one or the other.

anyone please correct me if i am wrong. i would like to be ceretan about this myself

But, if you are going to set up the devices, i think the best wayto do it is have two of your hard drives hooked to ide1 as slave and master, master being the drive with the OS on it, and then hook up the cd-rom as master on ide2.


hope that helps, and hope i got that correct.