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Help New drive in server - weird results

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7 replies

by w_dayton 1 view

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I have an NT 4.0 Server with Service Pack 6.

the original config was such that the single drive originally in it was partioned a couple of times and had the primary boot partition as DRIVE D: All of these partitions are labled in Disk Manager as Drive 1.

I just added an IDE hard Drive to the server for more storage space and now it popped up in Disk Manager as DRIVE 0??? I have the IDE drive set to MASTER and the IDE CD ROM burner hooked up to it (through the same cable) as Cable Select.

Yet the Server still boots fine as Drive 1 where the D: boot partition is. (I'm not sure why the original guy that set this up made it boot from D: instead of C:, but that's how he did it.)

What gives? Should the SCSI drive with the NT 4.0 Server boot partition be labeled as Drive 0? And shouldn't the IDE drive that was added afterwards be Drive 1??

This is a Dell poweredge 2300 server. The bios says that the boot config is to boot from A: then C:, but I don't think this matters because the SCSI BIOS kicks in shortly thereafter to take over the boot up process.

If everything is working okay (which it is) should I just leave this new IDE drive as DRIVE 0 and partition it up how I want to? Do I need to change it somehow to drive 1 and if so how?

Thanks

Semi-Newbie

7 replies

by mckaytech

Without knowing the full history of the machine, it's hard to know why it was set up the way it was, but I think if you take a look at the BOOT.INI file, you'll see why it works the way it does.

I would feel pretty comfortable just leaving the IDE as Drive 0 and leaving the SCSI drive the way it is and it seems to me that is the lowest risk way to go.

paul

by taiseermustafa

I agree with Paul that we don't know the full history of your Server, and leaving it is is fine if you don't have any problems.
Regarding Drive 0 Drive 1, did you try to connect the the IDE HD and CDROM to the secondary IDE controller on the main board Instead of the primery? You can try you will not loose anything.

Good Luck

by tschmuki

IDE Drives will always have the lower drive number then SCSI drives. This is due the fact of the BIOS orders from the mainboard and SCSI adapters. You may can change this arrangment in the mainboard BIOS settings.
I recommed to leave the drive settings as they are, unless you are planning to reinstall the server from scratch. You SCSI Drive is the drive with a active partition and Windows NT is reading the information out of the boot.ini file, therefore is used as boot device.
As other posteralready mentioned, it's pretty hard to give more clearly information without knowing the servers history.

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