usb hard drive drive letter

[Guest]

I make a lot of use of portable usb hard drives. On one drive I have an Excel
spreadsheet linked to an Access database. On my desktop the usb drive takes
drive letter H, so the link to the Access database includes H in the path.
When I use the usb drive with my laptop it takes drive letter F, so the link
no longer works, since the link is looking for a file on drive H, which
doesn't exist.

What is the way round this? Can you express the link with some sort of alias
in a way which doesn't include the drive letter? Is there a way of
controlling the drive letter assigned to a portable drive when you plug it
into a different computer? And what would happen if that drive letter was
already in use?

Grateful for assistance.

 

[R. McCarty]

The easiest (Non coding) answer is simply assign those removable
drives to a range of letters beyond the fixed drive(s). The schema
for drives is
Fixed C, D..... Ascending
Shares Z, Y,....Descending
So, on most systems I configure, I assign USB Thumb/Pen/Flash
to M, N... However, this only works consistently if you plug the
units into the same USB socket. XP should retain the drive letters
from session to session.

If you're looking for a coding answer, perhaps someone else will
post an answer.

 

[Opinicus]

I make a lot of use of portable usb hard drives. On one drive I have an
Excel
spreadsheet linked to an Access database. On my desktop the usb drive
takes
drive letter H, so the link to the Access database includes H in the path.
When I use the usb drive with my laptop it takes drive letter F, so the
link
no longer works, since the link is looking for a file on drive H, which
doesn't exist.

What is the way round this? Can you express the link with some sort of
alias
in a way which doesn't include the drive letter? Is there a way of
controlling the drive letter assigned to a portable drive when you plug it
into a different computer? And what would happen if that drive letter was
already in use?

I've found that by giving a device a name (My Computer > right click on the
device letter > Properties > General) WinXP will "remember" the drive letter
it was assigned to the next time the device is connected.