Any way to Set USB drive to a specific letter?

[Noozer]

I have a USB drive with a few programs installed on it. The programs run
without needing to be installed, but I need to know what drive letter that
they are on. I move the drive between several machines, and plan on using it
on PC's which I have no control over.

Is there any way to set up an external USB drive to ALWAYS be a specific
drive letter?

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I have a USB drive with a few programs installed on it. The programs run
without needing to be installed, but I need to know what drive letter that
they are on. I move the drive between several machines, and plan on using it
on PC's which I have no control over.

Is there any way to set up an external USB drive to ALWAYS be a specific
drive letter?

This might help: USBDLM - http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html

 

[Richard Urban]

Drive letter assignment is a function of the computer operating system, not
the individual USB device. Therefore, when you plug in a device to a new
computer, or to a different port on the same computer, the device will be
assigned the fist available drive letter.



--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Have a look at the link I gave the OP.

Drive letter assignment is a function of the computer operating system, not
the individual USB device. Therefore, when you plug in a device to a new
computer, or to a different port on the same computer, the device will be
assigned the fist available drive letter.



--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Noozer]

I have a USB drive with a few programs installed on it. The programs run

This might help: USBDLM - http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html

Thanks... Not good for this particular task, as this needs something
installed on the host PC, but definately something I'm going to try out here
at home.

 

[Barry Watzman]

Not necessarily. You can use disk management in computer management on
USB devices just like you do on any other disk drive, and in general, it
will "remember" these assignments even if the same USB device is removed
and then plugged back in later.

 

[Uwe Sieber]

I have a USB drive with a few programs installed on it. The programs run
without needing to be installed, but I need to know what drive letter that
they are on. I move the drive between several machines, and plan on using it
on PC's which I have no control over.

Is there any way to set up an external USB drive to ALWAYS be a specific
drive letter?

If you know about a drive letter that is availlable on all
maschines then you can use the SUBST command:

SUBST U: .\

..\ is a substitute for the current drive which only the SUBST
command understands...


On your own computers USBDLM is the perfect solution of course ;-)


Uwe

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Richard wrote "new computer", hence remembering does not apply.

 

[over]

If you know about a drive letter that is availlable on all
maschines then you can use the SUBST command:

SUBST U: .\

.\ is a substitute for the current drive which only the SUBST
command understands...

A minor point: .\ is also understood by many other commands or programs
than SUBST, it is just understood to mean a slightly different thing than
you state. SUBST expects a path specification - you should use a single
\ without the . if you want to specify the root of the current drive. To
specify the current directory, you would use the . by itself.

Due to the way that SUBST parses the command line, if the current
directory is the root, then .\ will specify the root of the current drive
to SUBST, but if the current directory is a subdirectory, you will
probably get a "Path not found - .\" error message.

 

[Uwe Sieber]

A minor point: .\ is also understood by many other commands or programs
than SUBST, it is just understood to mean a slightly different thing than
you state. SUBST expects a path specification - you should use a single
\ without the . if you want to specify the root of the current drive. To
specify the current directory, you would use the . by itself.

Oops, you are right. Just taken it from a sample I saw
without thinking about it too much...