The DOS Drive Letter Assignment Sequence

Isn’t Always What You Want

Q: What will happen to my CD-ROM drive letter if I create a new partition or

add a new drive?
A: If you consume the drive letter previously assigned to the CD-ROM drive,
the CD-ROM gets assigned the next available drive letter after your hard drive
partitions. You can prevent the CD-ROM drive letter from changing in the
future by assigning it a higher drive letter to begin with (such as M or N), creating
some unused letters between the last hard
disk and the first CD-ROM.
Q: Can I install Windows 9x on the same disk as Windows 2000 or Windows XP?
A: You cannot install Windows 9x in the same folder (directory) that holds
Windows 2000 or Windows XP, but you can install it to the same disk in a differ
ent partition or different folder. You’ll have to install to a different partition if you
have Windows 2000 or Windows XP in an NTFS partition, and if the NTFS parti-
tion is drive C, you’ll have to convert it to FAT because the Windows 9x boot
code doesn’t understand NTFS. You’ll also want to look into products such as
PowerQuest’s PartitionMagic to simplify choosing which operating system boots.
128 Part IV ✦ Storage
Summary
✦ Seek and access times, and sustained data transfer rate, are the most
important determiners of disk performance in your system.
✦ RAID systems can give you greatly increased performance and
reliability.
✦ Be sure to get enough disk space. Your requirements will always
increase over time.