Drive setup oddity

[Ghidrah]

I just had to buy a new HD and reinstal XP. (Maxtor 160 GB) When I opened My Comp, I noticed that all the drive letters had been changed. In fact the new HD with the OS was "G".
I wasn't able to change the letters. I also can't access the External drive, (Silver River IDE with USB connect) which also doesn't register. I unplugged what was the old "D" drive, the Ext and restarted, and it still registered as "G" and wouldn't let me change its letter.

I restarted reformatted and reinstalled XP. This time it logged as "C".
I'm pretty sure that the HP 7310 is also considered a removable drive, although, not sure why, the old 7130 had smart card slots but didn't have its own drive slot in My Comp.

Yest, I began reinstalling everything, this morning, I tried getting the Ext HD to show, still won't, switched USB cables, lights up, activity light flashes a couple of time but no go.
I tried plugging the old "D" drive back in, came in as a different drive letter, but also brought up a request for raid controllers, which never happened before. Not knowing any better, I refused, got an error message, so I rebooted , asked again, I stuck in the ASUS CD, it found the request and installed it. rebooted saw a message for Fast Trak search, no drive found. Getting real confused, did a restore from yest, still comes back, new hardware found.
Uninstalled old "D" HD rebooted, Fast trak message still shows up.
I don't know whats going on
Any help will be greatly appreciated
G

[glc]

Whenever you install Windows, all drives except the OS drive should be disconnected - plus all USB devices, card readers, etc. - anything that can possibly be assigned a drive letter except the main hard drive and the optical drive you are using for the install.

[Ghidrah]

I kind of figured that part out, after getting back home, I wrote down the mess. that pops up on boot

"Fast Trak 378 (TM) version 1.00.0.37
(c) 2003 Promise Tech inc all rights reserved
Scanning IDE drives
No drive attached to Fast trak controller
The bios is not installed"

I disconnected the "D" drive, to stop the "New Hardware Found" @ desktop and request for RAID drivers

I have no idea why I'm getting this, never saw it before, and always thought it had to do with a raid config.
Everything is/was set up as parallel ATA
Asus P4C 800 deluxe
Now primary, IDE (Master, Maxtor 160gb, OS,) (Slave Seagate 80gb games)
Secondary, (Master Plextor DVD burner) (Slave Teac CD/DVD player)
Ext. (IBM 40gb OS back up drive)
Old set up was same except OS was on a 40 GB Seagate

[glc]

Turn the Promise controller off in the bios if you don't have any drives connected to it. Use the motherboard manual to help you determine which controller is which. There are 2 IDE controllers - the native Intel ICH and the Promise. The Promise can only be used for hard drives and it has a RAID function.