Reinstallation of Windows 2003 - Logical Drive Renaming

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.win2000.setup (More info?)

Ok, I have a small issue i've encountered a number of times in the past, that
Partition Magic has usually been able to solve for me, however I do not have
the luxury of it at this company.

We encountered some OS corruption after a failed 2003 SP1 attempt, so I
ended up having to wipe C: clean and re-install to save some time attempting
to fix the problem. We have backups of C: completely, and the system state
(it's a domain controller).

Here's the problem. The server was configured as such: C: System Drive, E:
Data, D: CD. Both logical drives sit on a very large RAID array. We do not
backup E: for various reasons (it's 100GB, has a dev copy of Oracle, WSUS
content, etc). So, I need to keep E: intact (it is currently). When I
attempt to re-install Windows Server now, the old E: drive comes up as C:,
because i deleted the old partition that C: used to be on. How do I
re-create the partitions before using Windows setup, so that they will be
available for use the with the original configuration? Can I use something
(FDISK?) to create the original partition so that it will be displayed as C:
again, and set the other one to E:? I realize the naming is due to
primary/extended partition types. There was a Dell system partition that
came up as primary that I wiped because it was causing the partition C: was
on to come up as Extended instead of a primary.

How do I tell the installer to use C: to save a horde of problems later when
I want to run the restore from tape?

I'm reaching a point where I may have to wipe the entire array and start
from scratch to have it set up just the way I want. The Dell server
assistant CD wants to format the drive to put the system partition back on
and I'm afraid it's going to clean the whole array off (even though the data
is on another primary partition). The only reason I really want the Dell
partition back on is for diagnostics and to save some Boot.ini editing later
(since C: was technically partition 2). I didn't set this server up
originally, but I want to have all the partitions be primaries. I'm not sure
why C: was sitting in an extended partition or how Windows even would have
installed there by default originally.

I think i made a critical error by deleting the old partition. The only
reason I did that was because reparing 2003 did not work and a parallel
install kept locking up when I tried a restore.

I know this is a lot of info. If anyone has run into the logical drive
naming issue and has an easy way to fix, just let me know. I'm going to
backup E: to another tape and prepare to start from scratch.

Thanks.
Lance