External hard drives and desktop

Hi, and happy new year.
I use several hard drives, Firewire 400 & 800 mostly, but query would apply to USB also.
When i connect a drive it appears in a random position on my desktop ( I have a fairly cluttered desktop), is there any way to ensure that drives appear below my startup drive, nice and neat? If I'm using partitioned drives then all partitions would be nice in one neat column, rather than around the desktop. Is there away to organise them in the dock?
regards, alan bell in uk

No problem. 
(1) Click on the Finder icon in the Dock.  If your dock is on the bottom of the screen, it is the icon on the far left.
(2) Now, look at the menu called Finder at the top left of your screen and find "Preferences there". Or, you can just press command-,  (command-comma).
(3) Anyway, once the Preference window opens select the category "General" from the choices there.  You will see a list of things which you can choose to have displayed on the Desktop.  Make your selections and close the window.
charlie

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