Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.abit (More info?)

I added two more hard ATA drives to my AT7 mobo above the two I already have,
and put them off of IDE3, where my first two hard drives are on IDE1 and a
DVD-ROM and Zip disk are on IDE2.

What determines the order of the hard drives as the BIOS sees them ? In other
words, I have HDD0 as one of the drives in the boot sequence. Does this
designation change when I add new drives ?

The reason I ask this is that I have a boot loader, actually System Commander,
which is a very good product, and once I attached my two hard drives to IDE3
System Commander appeared to no longer find the operating systems that are
bootable on my IDE1 hard drives and appeared to be looking for the data on my
IDE3 hard drives, which are not even formatted yet.

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.abit (More info?)

the bios typically enumerates the drives in the order of the IDE
controllers. so, my experience is that HDD0 would be the first hard drive
that the system enumerates as it goes down through the IDE controllers. the
only way I can see a change to the designation to HDD0 is if you inserted a
drive onto a controller that got enumerated *prior* to a drive that had
already been HDD0.

for example, if you had previously not had a drive on IDE1 as master but had
it on IDE1 as slave or IDE2 and then inserted a drive onto IDE1 as Master,
it would take on HDD0 designation in my experience.

now, an entirely different matter is what the partitions do when you put
drives onto the system and that can be influenced by whether the partitions
are primary or logical drives in extended partitions. primary partitions
being installed onto the system can bump extended partitions further down,
in my experience.

--

Thomas Geery
Network+ certified

Due to a rat in da hood,
no longer running servers on Cox...

(even though someone turned me in,
what can I expect for violating the AUP, right?)


"Edward Diener No Spam" <eldiener_no_spam_here@earthlink.net> wrote in
message news:hADIe.953$Je.435@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net...
>I added two more hard ATA drives to my AT7 mobo above the two I already
>have,
> and put them off of IDE3, where my first two hard drives are on IDE1 and a
> DVD-ROM and Zip disk are on IDE2.
>
> What determines the order of the hard drives as the BIOS sees them ? In
> other words, I have HDD0 as one of the drives in the boot sequence. Does
> this designation change when I add new drives ?
>
> The reason I ask this is that I have a boot loader, actually System
> Commander,
> which is a very good product, and once I attached my two hard drives to
> IDE3
> System Commander appeared to no longer find the operating systems that are
> bootable on my IDE1 hard drives and appeared to be looking for the data on
> my
> IDE3 hard drives, which are not even formatted yet.

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.abit (More info?)

TomG wrote:
> the bios typically enumerates the drives in the order of the IDE
> controllers. so, my experience is that HDD0 would be the first hard drive
> that the system enumerates as it goes down through the IDE controllers. the
> only way I can see a change to the designation to HDD0 is if you inserted a
> drive onto a controller that got enumerated *prior* to a drive that had
> already been HDD0.
>
> for example, if you had previously not had a drive on IDE1 as master but had
> it on IDE1 as slave or IDE2 and then inserted a drive onto IDE1 as Master,
> it would take on HDD0 designation in my experience.

Thanks for the explanation.

>
> now, an entirely different matter is what the partitions do when you put
> drives onto the system and that can be influenced by whether the partitions
> are primary or logical drives in extended partitions. primary partitions
> being installed onto the system can bump extended partitions further down,
> in my experience.

OK, I understand that. My new drives should not be partitoned at all from the
factory as far as I know. I will query the System Commander people to see what
they say.