Assigning Drive letters to removable drives

[Guest]

Network drive letters are conflicting with the automatic drive assignments
created by Windows XP.

Specifically, our users have learned that their network recourses reside on
the G: drive and personal data on their H: drive and, various user
application settings have been set to a mapped G: or H: drive.

when a manufacturer installs removable drives or a user inserts a USB thumb
drive Windows XP assigns the device the next available letter depending on
what devices exist. (ie: D:CD/RW, EVD, F: ZIP, G: Removable Drive, H: USB
Drive)

We need this setting to stay with an "image" so that we do not have to make
the changes on each workstation.

I have tried to rename the MountedDevices through RegEdit but the changes
did not hold after an image restore. I have also looked into the Diskpart
tool but i do not see a way to assign a new letter to a volume by type. (if
type is "Removable" assign letter = T)

What is the best method of assigning the removeble drive letters so that
they are not given G or H as a drive letter?

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Network drive letters are conflicting with the automatic drive assignments
created by Windows XP.

Specifically, our users have learned that their network recourses reside on
the G: drive and personal data on their H: drive and, various user
application settings have been set to a mapped G: or H: drive.

when a manufacturer installs removable drives or a user inserts a USB thumb
drive Windows XP assigns the device the next available letter depending on
what devices exist. (ie: D:CD/RW, EVD, F: ZIP, G: Removable Drive, H: USB
Drive)

We need this setting to stay with an "image" so that we do not have to make
the changes on each workstation.

I have tried to rename the MountedDevices through RegEdit but the changes
did not hold after an image restore. I have also looked into the Diskpart
tool but i do not see a way to assign a new letter to a volume by type. (if
type is "Removable" assign letter = T)

What is the best method of assigning the removeble drive letters so that
they are not given G or H as a drive letter?

Your best method is to plan ahead and stay clear of the low
letters of the alphabet because they can easily be claimed by
CD burners, ZIP drives, flash disks, USB disks etc. Consider
using letters such as

P: ("Personal")
S: ("Section")

The change will be painful in the short run but will make
life much easier in the long run.

 

[Hans-Georg Michna]

What is the best method of assigning the removeble drive letters so that
they are not given G or H as a drive letter?

Pegasus is right. If, however, you can't change the drive
letters now, you could export the desired MountedDevices values
(i.e. export the whole key, then delete the unwanted ones from
the .reg file) and keep reimporting them when needed.

Not absolutely sure whether this would solve the problem, just
one of those ideas ... you'd have to test.

Hans-Georg

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the input/opinion. I had a pretty strong feeling from my last
staff meeting that a global change as you suggested was not really going to
happen. I do agree that we are not following the best practice. I have heard
that "Vista" will be designed on a root structure similar to a UNIX
environment. If this is true drive letters will no longer be a concern since
removable drives will just be treated as devices and that will not conflict
with network drives. If that is the case we can wait until we upgrade from XP
to change the mindset of our users.

For now I have found a solution that will save us a few steps:
1) Use diskpart to list the volumes and letter assignments given to each
drive.
2) Write a short script to reassign the removable drives (R,S,ect)
3) Create a batch file to run the diskpart script
4) Run the Sysprep manager and add the batch file to the "run once" commands
5) Run Sysprep
6) Create the image

As long as the image is restored on identical machines the drive letters
will be reassigned and there will not be a conflict with the mapped network
drives.