I've been very busy this week and have not had time to start messing about with computers so am not much further on than a week back.
I was just re-reading the whole of this thread to check that I haven't missed any important comments before I try to move onto next phase.
I just spotted a possible workaround for the Drive Letter shifting. The help article Blickied by Nutty says that if you partition Hard Drive number two but make the partition an "Extended Partition" (whatever that is), then apparently Windows will not give it a "Drive leter" of its own. I haven't yet tried to find if I can do this.
I'll keep the questions and solutions updated.
Quack!
Geoff.