Hi, Jay.
Disk Management is the tool that we use to assign "drive" letters to, well,
anything that can be assigned a "drive" letter. That includes volumes
(primary partitions and logical drives) on a physical drive, a network
drive, an optical (CD/DVD) drive, a camera or card reader, or a USB flash
drive. (Some of these devices can hold multiple "drives", such as a card
reader with slots for SD, CF and other types of media.)
Each time a device is attached, Vista assigns a letter. If we want it to
use the same letter each time, we can use Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc) to
assign the letter semi-permanently. Otherwise, it will be assigned the
"next available letter" and that may change each time we plug it in. Many
kinds of devices also allow us to assign a label, or name, which will be
written to the media and will not change, even if a different letter is
assigned in a later session.
In Disk Management, we can right-click on the device, then click Properties
and the Policies tab, where we can choose between "Optimize for quick
removal" and "Optimize for performance". The quick removal option writes
data we send to the device immediately, rather than caching it, so that we
don't need to wait for the "safe to remove" signal.
Once the removable disk is recognized and a letter is assigned, it should be
visible in Computer or Windows Explorer. You may have to visually search
for it if you don't know what drive letter has been assigned, and it may
have a label that you don't recognize.
RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail 2008 in Vista Ultimate x64)
