Drive Letters Change

[Guest]

How do I dedicate a drive letter to an external drive. My Documents is on an
external drive. I also have an external drive for photos. When I disconnect
or turn off one of the external drives and reconnect, the drives have a
different drive letter. This creates a problem for my shortcuts. Is there a
way to dedicate drive letters to those external drives so they will have the
same on every time?

 

[Guest]

It completely depends on the type of USB drive you are attaching.
If the drive is a thumb drive, when connected will take the next
available alpha letter. You CANNOT assign an alpha letter to it.

 

[Guest]

The drives are not thumb drives. They are USB drives with their own power
supply. I do not unplug the cable to the USB drive, just unplug the drive
from the cable. Does that make a difference?

 

[GHalleck]

The drives are not thumb drives. They are USB drives with their own power
supply. I do not unplug the cable to the USB drive, just unplug the drive
from the cable. Does that make a difference?

:

Both USB jump drives and external HD's can be enumerated
into the Windows Registry. Next time after plugging in the
USB drive, open Disk Management and assign the drive letter
through it.

 

[Uwe Sieber]

How do I dedicate a drive letter to an external drive. My Documents is on an
external drive. I also have an external drive for photos. When I disconnect
or turn off one of the external drives and reconnect, the drives have a
different drive letter. This creates a problem for my shortcuts. Is there a
way to dedicate drive letters to those external drives so they will have the
same on every time?

You can change the drive letter assignments in the Windows
Disk Management (Start -> Run -> diskmgmt.msc).

Windows saves letter assignments, but exactely one assigment
per letter only.
Sample: Drive1 is connected and you assign letter X. Then you
disconnect it. When you attach it again it gets letter X again
because Windows saved this assignment. Disconnect it again,
attach Drive2 and assign letter X, detach it and attach
Drive1 again. Drive1 get the the first free local letter now
beause the previous assingment has been superseded by Drive2
and assingning the first availlable local letter is the default
behaviour under Windows XP.

Therefore there is always a rivalry for the first availlable
local letter.
The best solution is to assign one high letter per USB drive,
far away from the first availlable one.


Uwe