Rod Speed - typed:
Depends on how you do the copy. If you use a dos based copy
like Ghost or Drive Image, the crucial thing to do is to make the
copy, AND THEN TURN THE SYSTEM OFF AND RESET THE
MASTER AND SLAVE before you let XP boot again.

That goes without saying. I've asked the wrong question. I'll rephrase
it. Will WinXP try to reassign drive letters if it sees a 2nd active
partition has been added? Other versions of Windows (DOS, W3.1, W9x)
would assign the letter D to any new active partition, incrementing the
other drive letters in the process IIRC.

I ask for academic reasons 'cos I would always reformat
as an extended partition containing logical volumes.

Thats not necessarily the best approach. The new drive
is likely to be rather faster than the original and so there
is a lot to be said for making the new drive the boot drive.

I presume you're referring to the good sense of running the OS off the
fastest disc rather than formatting any 2nd disc as an extended
partition.

Paul