Change of Physical HD Designations in Disk Managment

I have a Dell Studio XPS 9100 computer with Windows 7 Prof installed. The computer has two physical hard drives that came with the computer. The seccond physical hard drive was not partition or formatted when I received the computer. I divided the second physical HD into three partitions, Page File (D), Image Backup (E), and Data Backup (F). The first physical HD had the following volumes when it came from Dell: OEM partition (39 mb), Recovery partition (10.8 gb), and OS (C) (71 gb)
When using Disk Management, normally I would see the HD designation of Disk 0 for the OEM partition, Recovery partition and OS (C) partitions This morning after booting up the computer and looking at Disk Management, I am now seeing the volumes for Disk 0, Page File (D), Image Backup (E), and Data Backup (F). For Disk 1, I am now seeing OEM partition, Recovery partition, and OS (C) partitions.

Is it possible for physcial hard drive designations to change and still have the computer operate normally?? Any help in understanding this situation would be very much appreciated, Sam

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Yes, it is possible for this to happen and the computer still operate fine. However, that doesn't answer why it would do that out of nowhere.

It seems like the second hard drive is plugged into the first port, hence disk 0, But as far as windows is concerned this drive did not exist untill you initiated it(partitioned and formated). Being in the first port this disk is automatically disk 0 and the boot disk becomes disk1. Your drive letters are what matters at this point for all the refferences from the shortcuts and registry.

The BIOS is looking to boot from the Disk ID, name/serial number and other than setting up raid or turning particula ports on or off the Bios doesn't care what port you boot off of as long as it's set right, this becomes Drive C in windows reguardless of what port it's plugged into.

In short you are fine and have nothing to worry about, it is performing as it should.

theog,FliGi7, and BruBern, many thanks for your replies. Later in the day after I posted my initial message, I rebooted my computer and checked Disk Management, and to my surprise, the proper HD assignment was back again (Disk 0, OS(C), etc).

Now each day when I boot up the computer, I check Disk Management, and so far, the HD assignment is correct! I am happy to say the least, but as FliGi7 has stated, why did this happen, especially since no major hardware or software changes had been made. Needless to say, I am regularly doing my image backups.

Any further thoughts/suggestions would be very much appreciated, Sam.

If it were a desktop system you built yourself, it could be that a cable has a loose connection or is failing, to the point where the second drive gets recognized before the first at bootup and changes what the OS sees as the first and second connected drives. Other than that, no real ideas at this point, and even that's a stretch.

FliGi7, thanks for your reply. When I received the computer in October 2010 from Dell and before making the first bootup, I took the side off of the tower, and checked each electrical connection and found them all secure.

I think my neighbor has it right and I agree with him - the more I learn about computers, the less I know about them.

Thanks again, Sam.