I have switched the functions 2 of my PCs, JGMAIN and JGSERVER.

JGMAIN is my main PC with C (OS), D (AppsData), E (DataBack) and F
(ShareBack, local copy of my main backup on the server).

The drive letters follow the disk numbers (C = Disk 0 etc.)

On JGSERVER it is a right bugger's muddle. It has 3 x NVMe and 8 drives
and the letters and disk numbers are all over the place. It will be
important if I have a disk failure because at the moment I can't tell
which drive relates to which slot in the case.

The Chinese LSI/HBA is clearly marked Port 0 and Port 1 and the connecting cables numbered 1,2,3,4 on each cable, and the backplane is connected from
the top down in order.

At the moment the only way I can think or working it out is to power down,
pull all the drives, re-boot, find out how it has allocated the NVMe's,
power down, insert the top drive, power up and look again.

Any thoughts?

PS - Disk Management numbers drives from 0 and MiniTool Partition Wizard
from 1 which threw me at first.

PS2 - I can't find the option to tell Win 10 not to highlight newly
installed Programs, has it been removed?

--
Jeff Gaines Dorset UK
The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil but by those who
watch them without doing anything. (Albert Einstein)

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Jeff Gaines wrote:

Any thoughts?

ISTR the card had a set of 8x headers for activity LEDs, any point in
wiring it up then doing a huge read?

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 10/07/2025 14:35, Jeff Gaines wrote:

I have switched the functions 2 of my PCs, JGMAIN and JGSERVER.

JGMAIN is my main PC with C (OS), D (AppsData), E (DataBack) and F (ShareBack, local copy of my main backup on the server).

The drive letters follow the disk numbers (C = Disk 0 etc.)

On JGSERVER it is a right bugger's muddle. It has 3 x  NVMe and 8 drives
and the letters and disk numbers are all over the place. It will be
important if I have a disk failure because at the moment I can't tell
which drive relates to which slot in the case.

The Chinese LSI/HBA is clearly marked Port 0 and Port 1 and the
connecting cables numbered 1,2,3,4 on each cable, and the backplane is connected from the top down in order.

At the moment the only way I can think or working it out is to power
down, pull all the drives, re-boot, find out how it has allocated the
NVMe's, power down, insert the top drive, power up and look again.

Any thoughts?

PS - Disk Management numbers drives from 0 and MiniTool Partition Wizard
from 1 which threw me at first.

PS2 - I can't find the option to tell Win 10 not to highlight newly
installed Programs, has it been removed?

I have never explored the options in Win10, but I remember in Win7 I
went into "Computer Management" then "Disc Management" and I got a
display of all the disc drives. I could then right click and use the
"Change Drive Letter" option to give specific drives my chosen drive letter.

I would expect Win10 to have a similar capability but MS might have
moved it somewhere else or given it a different name. I heard a rumour
that MS had two development streams and they leapfrogged each other,
hence a good one followed by a not so good one before you got another
good one. So Win98 developed into Vista which developed into Win8, and
XP developed into Win7 which developed into Win10. That is why I am
reasonably confident that what was available in Win7 would have carried
into Win10. The problem will be finding where it has been put.

Happy hunting ...

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Thu, 10 Jul 2025 23:39:44 +0100, Indy Jess John wrote:

On 10/07/2025 14:35, Jeff Gaines wrote:

I have switched the functions 2 of my PCs, JGMAIN and JGSERVER.

JGMAIN is my main PC with C (OS), D (AppsData), E (DataBack) and F
(ShareBack, local copy of my main backup on the server).

The drive letters follow the disk numbers (C = Disk 0 etc.)

On JGSERVER it is a right bugger's muddle. It has 3 x  NVMe and 8
drives and the letters and disk numbers are all over the place. It will
be important if I have a disk failure because at the moment I can't
tell which drive relates to which slot in the case.

The Chinese LSI/HBA is clearly marked Port 0 and Port 1 and the
connecting cables numbered 1,2,3,4 on each cable, and the backplane is
connected from the top down in order.

At the moment the only way I can think or working it out is to power
down, pull all the drives, re-boot, find out how it has allocated the
NVMe's, power down, insert the top drive, power up and look again.

Any thoughts?

PS - Disk Management numbers drives from 0 and MiniTool Partition
Wizard from 1 which threw me at first.

PS2 - I can't find the option to tell Win 10 not to highlight newly
installed Programs, has it been removed?

I have never explored the options in Win10, but I remember in Win7 I
went into "Computer Management" then "Disc Management" and I got a
display of all the disc drives. I could then right click and use the
"Change Drive Letter" option to give specific drives my chosen drive
letter.

I would expect Win10 to have a similar capability but MS might have
moved it somewhere else or given it a different name. I heard a rumour
that MS had two development streams and they leapfrogged each other,
hence a good one followed by a not so good one before you got another
good one. So Win98 developed into Vista which developed into Win8, and
XP developed into Win7 which developed into Win10. That is why I am reasonably confident that what was available in Win7 would have carried
into Win10. The problem will be finding where it has been put.

Same - via Disk Management



--
My posts are my copyright and if @diy_forums or Home Owners' Hub
wish to copy them they can pay me £1 a message.
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK: http://www.mirrorservice.org
*lightning surge protection* - a w_tom conductor

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 10/07/2025 in message <104pffh$3j6od$3@dont-email.me> Indy Jess John
wrote:

On 10/07/2025 14:35, Jeff Gaines wrote:

I have switched the functions 2 of my PCs, JGMAIN and JGSERVER.

JGMAIN is my main PC with C (OS), D (AppsData), E (DataBack) and F >>(ShareBack, local copy of my main backup on the server).

The drive letters follow the disk numbers (C = Disk 0 etc.)

On JGSERVER it is a right bugger's muddle. It has 3 x  NVMe and 8 drives >>and the letters and disk numbers are all over the place. It will be >>important if I have a disk failure because at the moment I can't tell
which drive relates to which slot in the case.

The Chinese LSI/HBA is clearly marked Port 0 and Port 1 and the
connecting cables numbered 1,2,3,4 on each cable, and the backplane is >>connected from the top down in order.

At the moment the only way I can think or working it out is to power
down, pull all the drives, re-boot, find out how it has allocated the >>NVMe's, power down, insert the top drive, power up and look again.

Any thoughts?

PS - Disk Management numbers drives from 0 and MiniTool Partition Wizard >>from 1 which threw me at first.

PS2 - I can't find the option to tell Win 10 not to highlight newly >>installed Programs, has it been removed?

I have never explored the options in Win10, but I remember in Win7 I went >into "Computer Management" then "Disc Management" and I got a display of
all the disc drives. I could then right click and use the "Change Drive >Letter" option to give specific drives my chosen drive letter.

I would expect Win10 to have a similar capability but MS might have moved
it somewhere else or given it a different name. I heard a rumour that MS
had two development streams and they leapfrogged each other, hence a good
one followed by a not so good one before you got another good one. So
Win98 developed into Vista which developed into Win8, and XP developed
into Win7 which developed into Win10. That is why I am reasonably
confident that what was available in Win7 would have carried into Win10.
The problem will be finding where it has been put.

Happy hunting ...

Hi IJJ, nice to hear from you :-)

I have indeed found that option, the issue I have is relating the physical drive to the drive's location. It's a Silverstone C380 case with 8 hot
swap drives accessible from the front.

--
Jeff Gaines Dorset UK
It may be that your sole purpose in life is to serve as a warning to others.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Thu, 7/10/2025 9:35 AM, Jeff Gaines wrote:

I have switched the functions 2 of my PCs, JGMAIN and JGSERVER.

JGMAIN is my main PC with C (OS), D (AppsData), E (DataBack) and F (ShareBack, local copy of my main backup on the server).

The drive letters follow the disk numbers (C = Disk 0 etc.)

On JGSERVER it is a right bugger's muddle. It has 3 x  NVMe and 8 drives and the letters and disk numbers are all over the place. It will be important if I have a disk failure because at the moment I can't tell which drive relates to which slot in the

case.

The Chinese LSI/HBA is clearly marked Port 0 and Port 1 and the connecting cables numbered 1,2,3,4 on each cable, and the backplane is connected from the top down in order.

At the moment the only way I can think or working it out is to power down, pull all the drives, re-boot, find out how it has allocated the NVMe's, power down, insert the top drive, power up and look again.

Any thoughts?

PS - Disk Management numbers drives from 0 and MiniTool Partition Wizard from 1 which threw me at first.

PS2 - I can't find the option to tell Win 10 not to highlight newly installed Programs, has it been removed?

The drive letters, are maintained in the registry of each boot OS.

This means, without some fairly careful "manual matching" on the part
of the user, some multiboots will not display the same letters.

for example, as a joke, one boot OS here has three partitions labeled CHS.
If I boot the other OS, the letters are CDE and the C obviously
can't be the same on both OSes when they boot. There are limitations on
what the boot letter can be. You can "contrive" to make the drive
letter other than C, I've done that before, but this is something you have
to set your snare, before the OS installation phase begins.

The result is, the boot OS letters will be irregular, while
the data partitions, the letters can be assigned manually.

The command "mountvol" displays a similarly named section of
the Registry. That observation doesn't have a lot of utility exactly.

*******

The OS collects info and shares it in Powershell (without Admin being needed). However, again, as in most things, the numbers don't make a lot of sense.
You start to see a pattern and say to youself "we're saved", then the very
next hardware device type comes along and spoils the pattern.

In this example, I put four storage devices in a PC. The PCH SATA has the
SSD boot drive. Two Asmedia cards (two ports each) were put in x1 slots,
and each card supports one HDD. But the HDD was put on a different port of
the two ports offered on the card. The fourth storage device is an NVMe, that would not work on the CPU sled location, but worked OK on the PCH hosted sled. The two Asmedia cards make a tiny bit of sense in their numbering, but the
NVMe then pokes its nose in and ruins the pattern.

PS > Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_DiskDrive -Property *


DeviceID : \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE0
Caption : Lexar SSD NS100 256GB <=== PCH SATA port SCSIBus : 3
SCSILogicalUnit : 0
SCSIPort : 0
SCSITargetId : 0

DeviceID : \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE2
SCaption : WDC WD2003FZEX-00SRLA0 <=== Each HDD has its own ASMEDIA card, but one has low port, one has high port
SCSIBus : 0
SCSILogicalUnit : 0
SCSIPort : 2
SCSITargetId : 0

DeviceID : \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE3
Caption : Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 500GB <=== NVMe is on Southbridge bus side, with the two ASMEDIA cards.
SCSIBus : 0
SCSILogicalUnit : 0
SCSIPort : 3
SCSITargetId : 0

DeviceID : \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1
Caption : WDC WD1003FZEX-00K3CA0 <=== Each HDD has its own ASMEDIA card, but one has low port, one has high port
SCSIBus : 1
SCSILogicalUnit : 0
SCSIPort : 1
SCSITargetId : 0

PS C:\Users\Bullwinkle> ROWBOAT <=== Name of Win10 boot OS for this test (NS100 #4)

It took a few tries, before I could even get the hardware to behave,
let alone work well.

Notice there are no drive letters. Not at this level. This is just the "rows" in Disk Management level.

On your eight port card, it's possible the "SCSIPORT" field may
increment. But if you have an NVMe sled on the same side as the
eight port card, it is also possible its SCSIPORT will be
a continuation of the enumeration on the eight port card.

*******

What's supposed to inspire you, is seeing the Port numbers
displayed in the UEFI popup boot menu :-)

When you have a 6 port SATA motherboard, that is not usually
a single hardware block. It is a block of 2 ports, plus
a block of 4 ports, from the era where two ports were
SATA III and the other four ports were SATA II.

Back in the day, Win98 had PrimaryMaster, PrimarySlave,
SecondaryMaster, SecondarySlave, on INT14 and INT15. Thus, they
tried to keep that as a "group of four" detection as a
hardware block, it had Compatible and Native modes and
so on. It was done that way, so Win98 (for a time), could
boot on your equipment. When you operated that way, the
other two SATA ports might have been shut off (so Win98
would not get confused). That's why the division of the
ports is the way it is.

Today, the ports could be uniform and they could be put
on the same hardware bock, because a set of BIOS options
no longer exists.

Things are discovered in a kind of "bus enumeration order",
and it is supposed to make sense. Scouts honour. Or the
cheque is in the mail. Something like that. Maybe AIDA64
lists them properly.

Paul

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 11/07/2025 14:22, Paul wrote:

On Thu, 7/10/2025 9:35 AM, Jeff Gaines wrote:

I have switched the functions 2 of my PCs, JGMAIN and JGSERVER.

JGMAIN is my main PC with C (OS), D (AppsData), E (DataBack) and F (ShareBack, local copy of my main backup on the server).

The drive letters follow the disk numbers (C = Disk 0 etc.)

On JGSERVER it is a right bugger's muddle. It has 3 x  NVMe and 8 drives and the letters and disk numbers are all over the place. It will be important if I have a disk failure because at the moment I can't tell which drive relates to which slot in

the case.

The Chinese LSI/HBA is clearly marked Port 0 and Port 1 and the connecting cables numbered 1,2,3,4 on each cable, and the backplane is connected from the top down in order.

At the moment the only way I can think or working it out is to power down, pull all the drives, re-boot, find out how it has allocated the NVMe's, power down, insert the top drive, power up and look again.

Any thoughts?

PS - Disk Management numbers drives from 0 and MiniTool Partition Wizard from 1 which threw me at first.

PS2 - I can't find the option to tell Win 10 not to highlight newly installed Programs, has it been removed?

The drive letters, are maintained in the registry of each boot OS.

This means, without some fairly careful "manual matching" on the part
of the user, some multiboots will not display the same letters.

for example, as a joke, one boot OS here has three partitions labeled CHS.
If I boot the other OS, the letters are CDE and the C obviously
can't be the same on both OSes when they boot. There are limitations on
what the boot letter can be. You can "contrive" to make the drive
letter other than C, I've done that before, but this is something you have
to set your snare, before the OS installation phase begins.

The result is, the boot OS letters will be irregular, while
the data partitions, the letters can be assigned manually.

The command "mountvol" displays a similarly named section of
the Registry. That observation doesn't have a lot of utility exactly.

*******

The OS collects info and shares it in Powershell (without Admin being needed).
However, again, as in most things, the numbers don't make a lot of sense.
You start to see a pattern and say to youself "we're saved", then the very next hardware device type comes along and spoils the pattern.

In this example, I put four storage devices in a PC. The PCH SATA has the
SSD boot drive. Two Asmedia cards (two ports each) were put in x1 slots,
and each card supports one HDD. But the HDD was put on a different port of the two ports offered on the card. The fourth storage device is an NVMe, that would not work on the CPU sled location, but worked OK on the PCH hosted sled.
The two Asmedia cards make a tiny bit of sense in their numbering, but the NVMe then pokes its nose in and ruins the pattern.

PS > Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_DiskDrive -Property *

DeviceID : \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE0
Caption : Lexar SSD NS100 256GB <=== PCH SATA port
SCSIBus : 3
SCSILogicalUnit : 0
SCSIPort : 0
SCSITargetId : 0

DeviceID : \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE2
SCaption : WDC WD2003FZEX-00SRLA0 <=== Each HDD has its own ASMEDIA card, but one has low port, one has high port
SCSIBus : 0
SCSILogicalUnit : 0
SCSIPort : 2
SCSITargetId : 0

DeviceID : \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE3
Caption : Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 500GB <=== NVMe is on Southbridge bus side, with the two ASMEDIA cards.
SCSIBus : 0
SCSILogicalUnit : 0
SCSIPort : 3
SCSITargetId : 0

DeviceID : \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1
Caption : WDC WD1003FZEX-00K3CA0 <=== Each HDD has its own ASMEDIA card, but one has low port, one has high port
SCSIBus : 1
SCSILogicalUnit : 0
SCSIPort : 1
SCSITargetId : 0

PS C:\Users\Bullwinkle> ROWBOAT <=== Name of Win10 boot OS for this test (NS100 #4)

It took a few tries, before I could even get the hardware to behave,
let alone work well.

Notice there are no drive letters. Not at this level. This is just the "rows" in Disk Management level.

On your eight port card, it's possible the "SCSIPORT" field may
increment. But if you have an NVMe sled on the same side as the
eight port card, it is also possible its SCSIPORT will be
a continuation of the enumeration on the eight port card.

*******

What's supposed to inspire you, is seeing the Port numbers
displayed in the UEFI popup boot menu :-)

When you have a 6 port SATA motherboard, that is not usually
a single hardware block. It is a block of 2 ports, plus
a block of 4 ports, from the era where two ports were
SATA III and the other four ports were SATA II.

Back in the day, Win98 had PrimaryMaster, PrimarySlave,
SecondaryMaster, SecondarySlave, on INT14 and INT15. Thus, they
tried to keep that as a "group of four" detection as a
hardware block, it had Compatible and Native modes and
so on. It was done that way, so Win98 (for a time), could
boot on your equipment. When you operated that way, the
other two SATA ports might have been shut off (so Win98
would not get confused). That's why the division of the
ports is the way it is.

Today, the ports could be uniform and they could be put
on the same hardware bock, because a set of BIOS options
no longer exists.

Things are discovered in a kind of "bus enumeration order",
and it is supposed to make sense. Scouts honour. Or the
cheque is in the mail. Something like that. Maybe AIDA64
lists them properly.

Paul

Sigh. SO much simpler in Linux

--
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's
too dark to read.

Groucho Marx

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 11/07/2025 in message <104r370$1h3km$1@dont-email.me> Paul wrote:

The drive letters, are maintained in the registry of each boot OS.

Thank you for the work you put in, I read it but snipped for brevity.

It describes very well the nightmare I am in, however I connect the LSI
card to the backplane I can't get the drives to follow on logically -
which I need if I am to be able to replace the right failed drive. Part 2
of the nightmare is drilling holes in the drive, hitting it with a lump
hammer then getting a passing steam roller to drive over it before
discovering I extracted the wrong drive.

It wasn't helped by my Mattias keyboard packing up, unknown to me various
keys have just stopped working which I didn't discover until I tried to
copy and paste a s/w key and just managed to deleted it!

I'll have an ice lolly and thing it through...

--
Jeff Gaines Dorset UK
All those who believe in psychokinesis raise my hand.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Fri, 7/11/2025 9:57 AM, Jeff Gaines wrote:

On 11/07/2025 in message <104r370$1h3km$1@dont-email.me> Paul wrote:

The drive letters, are maintained in the registry of each boot OS.

Thank you for the work you put in, I read it but snipped for brevity.

It describes very well the nightmare I am in, however I connect the LSI card to the backplane I can't get the drives to follow on logically - which I need if I am to be able to replace the right failed drive. Part 2 of the nightmare is drilling holes

in the drive, hitting it with a lump hammer then getting a passing steam roller to drive over it before discovering I extracted the wrong drive.

It wasn't helped by my Mattias keyboard packing up, unknown to me various keys have just stopped working which I didn't discover until I tried to copy and paste a s/w key and just managed to deleted it!

I'll have an ice lolly and thing it through...

Keyboards work on a matrix of wires, like "7x17".

You may find that rather than all the keys taking a holiday,
it is just a group of 7 of them.

The "modifier" keys are separate electrical inputs and
those don't have to be part of a matrix wiring pattern.

Due to the irregular nature of the key layout, the "wire" with
the group of 7, the pattern of how they're wired, may not be
apparent. The failed ones could all be in one general locality,
but you can't always stick a rule along the keys and predict
which other one will also be failed.

The matrix "scans" looking for key closures. Spilling juice or
a Coke in there, the scanning matrix is high impedance, which means
it does not take much of a conductive fluid to annoy the thing.

Paul

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)