Hi Linda,

 LP> But before Os2 installs, & I use my programs, the small logical drive
 LP> will have a letter. 

Now that you are moving out of the DOS/Windows world, it is probably time to
build a better understanding of EXACTLY what a DRIVE letter is, and EXACTLY
what a PARTITION really is. There is a relationship between them, but perhaps
not in the way you currently think.

A DRIVE LETTER is simply a LABEL that the OS currently running assigns to a
PARTITION, so that the USER can "point" to the partition. Try thinking about a 
non-DOS style OS such as Linux. ALL unix style OS's work fine without ANY
understanding of drive letters at all. The partition that unix boots from is
known as the ROOT partition (similar to a ROOT directory), and ALL other
partitions that unix needs to access are MOUNTED directly off the ROOT
partition and to the user look just like a directory on that ROOT partition,
but the user specifies what the partitions are, and where they are found via
the MOUNT command. No drive letters are used at all.


Back to your statement above, I can see 2 different possibe things you are
talking about -
  1. If you are talking about the Boot Manager PARTITION, then no, it NEVER 
has a letter assigned, because the assignment of a driver letter is a function 
of the OS being loaded, and Boot Manager (a VERY simplistic OS) does NOT
understand driver letters, nor does it NEED to understand them, it only needs
to understand about PARTITIONS.
  2. If you are talking about the partition that you are going to install OS/2 

onto, then only an OS that is able to recognise the formating on that
partition (FAT or HPFS), will actually ASSIGN a drive letter to it. All other
OS's will treat it as if it did not exist!

All this is controlled by a tag in the partition table that indicates what
TYPE of partition it is. The use and assignment of drive LETTERS is a decision 
made by the OS being loaded. When DOS boots, it ASSUMES that it is booting
from C:, because C: is all it knows about when it starts. Any other partitions 
that it recognises are THEN assigned letters in the sequence that it finds
them.

When OS/2 boots, it does NOT assume it is on C:. It looks at the partition
configurations on the drives it can see, and assigns the drive letters at that 
point using the SAME order as DOS does.  This means that if ALL partitions
were FAT, and they could ALL be seen by OS/2 and DOS then OS/2 and OS will see 
the partitions in exactly the same sequence and assign the same drive letters
accordingly.

If its still confusing, think about this. If you have 4 partitions that DOS
recognises (C, D, E, F), and you delete partiion D. What happens to E & F? The 
E & F partitions are untouched, BUT the letters assigned to them at boot up
are now different. This is why you MUST get used to working with drive letters 
as DYNAMIC entities that can and do change according to items outside the
control of the OS that assigns them!


 LP> I could Partition Magic & then not install OS/2 for
 LP> days.  How will I tell OS/2 that the small partition is to be used at
 LP> the BM drive?

When you empty a cylinder of space on the disk, LEAVE IT AS EMPTY SPACE! Do
NOT put a partiion there using Partition Manager! Your machine will still run
fine but will have 1 Cylinder of unassigned space that will be ignored by all
your existing S/W. When you boot OS/2 for the first time, select the ADVANCED
install, and this will take you directly to the OS/2 FDISK program. You can
NOW select the option to install Boot Manager, and you can point it at the
place you want it installed.


 RW> It does not get a drive letter at this time, or at

 LP> Will the Fdisk just Fdisk the small partition?

FDISK changes ONLY the partition table, not the actual partitions themselves.
When you tell FDISK to SAVE the changes, then the entire partition table is
re-written, but the partitions themselves are left alone. ALL FDISKS must
re-write the entire partition table, that is their main purpose in life. 

If you think about it, FDISK is a poor name for the utility, it probably
should have been called PDISK, for PARTITION DISK. It certainly does not
FORMAT a partition either.

I hope this helps..........pk.


--- Maximus/2 3.01