>>would the second drive (FAT 32 WIn 95) be assigned a letter even
though it does not have a recognized format? Would the third drive
then become E: even if the second drive did no receive a letter as it is
not recognized?
In Win 95 (and DOS), unrecognized partitions are simply omitted
from the drive letter sequence and following partitions are
assigned the letters sequentially In your example, the first
drive would be C and the third D. I don't know about NT because
NT recognizes everything I have; however, I would be very
much surprised if it were different.
Incidentally, the first primary partition on each physical
disk gets a drive letter, THEN other primary partitions and
logical drives in extended partitions, which is how my
NT partition ended up with the letter G: It's the second
partition on the first drive, and I initially booted with
four drives, so the first partition on each drive got
C, D, E, and F; and then the second partion on the first
drive (the "C" drive) got G. I've never been much for
extended partitions (in fact, I normally put only one
partition per disk), so I'm now out of my depth as usual.
But I think after the first partition letters are assigned
for each disk, other partition letters get assigned in
partition order within physical disk order. I suppose
logical drives act like partitions in this sequence,
but don't bet the farm on it. Oh, for the C drive at least,
it's the first ACTIVE primary partition on the drive.
(Partitions are marked active in the partition table of
the master boot record.) I don't think active is a requirement
for anything past the "C" partition. |
