Assigning drive letters that STAY!!

[Complete Newb]

I have a pair of different brand external hard drives; one's a Seagate,
one's a Maxtor. They both connect to the PC via a USB 2.0 cable, and they
both work fine.

I have a backup software package called HandyBackup that you can schedule
backups on. Currently I have several directories from the network backed up
to K: (which is the external drive) during the wee hours of the morning when
no one's at work. What I want to do is come in to work, unplug the one
external drive and plug in the 2nd one (into the same USB 2.0 port on the
PC), and take the first one home. I trade off this way so that I have a
current backup at home (in case work blows up).

Now, each drive by itself seems to remember its drive letter when I plug it
in, as long as I only use one drive. However, if the first drive is K, and
I unplug it and plug in the other drive, that second drive gets the G drive
letter as default. So I have to manually change the drive letter (or change
the backup scripts) to get the backup to work right. if I change the G to
K, then when I plug in the OTHER drive (the first one), now THAT one gets G.
So it seems that Windows realizes it's a different drive, even though it's
the same USB port, and assigns a litter different than the K it somehow
knows was removed.

I'd like to make it so both drives automatically get K when plugged in and
recognized, so I don't need to either reassign drive letters or change the
backup scripts every time I trade external drives.

I saw a lot of posts saying that Windows does not remember drive letter
assignments, and only assigns the next available letter, but the K IS
remembered as long as I don't assign K to the second external drive. In
other words, if I assign K to one external drive, I can unplug and
re-connect that same drive, and it will always remember the K. It's only if
I assign K to the OTHER drive that it forgets it on the first drive.

Again, these are two EXTERNAL hard drives being traded back forth on ONE USB
2.0 port on the PC.

Any help would be appreciated, and thanks for reading.

 

[David Vair]

Yes, but each hard drive has a unique hardware ID number specific to that drive itself. Even though
they are on the same port they have different physical ID numbers, thats why when you reassign the
letter and then connect new drive it goes back to first alphabetically available letter. I don't
beleive theres a way around that unless you want to manually change one drive to K and the the other
to L and have two scripts. Run one when the K drive is hooked in say on M,W,F and L on T,Th using
the scheduler.

 

[Complete Newb]

DAve:

Thanks for the response, it is appreciated. I was afraid there wasn't a way
to do this, and that alternating script thing was an idea I had, I was just
hoping to make the whole process a little more idiot proof (the idiot being
myself).

Thanks again!

 

[Opinicus]

I'd like to make it so both drives automatically get K when plugged in and
recognized, so I don't need to either reassign drive letters or change the
backup scripts every time I trade external drives.

So far I've found that giving USB drives a unique name tends to lock the
letter assignment.

 

[Bob I]

Try this utility from Uwe Sieber
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html