Drive Letter Problem

[Frank]

I have an external hard drive that I keep plugged into a USB port and only
turn it on when I want to do a backup. Whenever I have turned it on, it has
always come on as drive letter J. My CD drive is device I. I temporarily
plugged in a card reader which also came up as J and worked fine. Now when
I turn on my hard drive it comes up as K, even though it is the only USB
device plugged in. This wont work with my backups which are pointed to J.
Any ideas how to get it back to J????
Frank

 

[Kerry Brown]

Use the disk management console (diskmgmt.msc). Change the drive letter to a
higher one (e.g. M and then edit your backups to work with this drive
letter.

 

[Stefan Z Camilleri]

I have an external hard drive that I keep plugged into a USB port and
only
turn it on when I want to do a backup. Whenever I have turned it on, it
has
always come on as drive letter J. My CD drive is device I. I temporarily
plugged in a card reader which also came up as J and worked fine. Now
when
I turn on my hard drive it comes up as K, even though it is the only USB
device plugged in. This wont work with my backups which are pointed to J.
Any ideas how to get it back to J????
Frank

Hi Frank

To change the drive letter in this case; after ensuring that drive letter
J is available of course, simply right click on 'my computer' and select
'manage', then go to disk management and right click the drive.

there should be an option to change drive letter there.

if the drive letter is not available, then windows still thinks that there
is a drive on letter j

just a personal hint for the future that i found handy for myself. when i
am intent on the system persisting a drive letter for a removable device,
i always assign it a letter in the x y z range.

likewise, drive letters for removable drives are not guaranteed by the
system.

 

[Frank]

Thanks, that worked.
Frank

Hi Frank

To change the drive letter in this case; after ensuring that drive letter
J is available of course, simply right click on 'my computer' and select
'manage', then go to disk management and right click the drive.

there should be an option to change drive letter there.

if the drive letter is not available, then windows still thinks that there
is a drive on letter j

just a personal hint for the future that i found handy for myself. when i
am intent on the system persisting a drive letter for a removable device,
i always assign it a letter in the x y z range.

likewise, drive letters for removable drives are not guaranteed by the
system.

 

[Kerry Brown]

Thanks, that worked.
Frank

Hi Frank

To change the drive letter in this case; after ensuring that drive letter
J is available of course, simply right click on 'my computer' and select
'manage', then go to disk management and right click the drive.

there should be an option to change drive letter there.

if the drive letter is not available, then windows still thinks that
there is a drive on letter j

just a personal hint for the future that i found handy for myself. when
i am intent on the system persisting a drive letter for a removable
device, i always assign it a letter in the x y z range.

likewise, drive letters for removable drives are not guaranteed by the
system.

For a drive letter that you want to not be disturbed you should use a letter
from the middle of the alphabet. External drives get enumerated from the
lowest available letter upwards and network drive mappings default to the
highest letter downwards.

 

[Rock]

Thanks, that worked.

"Stefan Z Camilleri" wrote

You're still going to run into that problem if you plug in another card
reader or other device. The way around this is as Kerry suggested. Assign
a higher drive letter to the external drive and leave the lower drive
letters right after the hard drives for other devices you might occasionally
attach.

 

[Kenneth]

I have an external hard drive that I keep plugged into a USB port and only
turn it on when I want to do a backup. Whenever I have turned it on, it has
always come on as drive letter J. My CD drive is device I. I temporarily
plugged in a card reader which also came up as J and worked fine. Now when
I turn on my hard drive it comes up as K, even though it is the only USB
device plugged in. This wont work with my backups which are pointed to J.
Any ideas how to get it back to J????
Frank

Hi Frank,

Right click on My Computer, and click on Manage...

Drop down "Storage", then "Removable Storage."

Once there, you should see your disk in the right pane.

Right click on it, and you should be able to re-assign its
drive letter.

No expert I, but I hope this helps,

 

[Kenneth]

Hi Frank,

Right click on My Computer, and click on Manage...

Drop down "Storage", then "Removable Storage."

Once there, you should see your disk in the right pane.

Right click on it, and you should be able to re-assign its
drive letter.

No expert I, but I hope this helps,

Hi Frank (and others),

I posted my suggestion before updating and seeing that
others had pointed you in the right direction.

'Sorry,

 

[Stefan Z Camilleri]

You're still going to run into that problem if you plug in another card
reader or other device. The way around this is as Kerry suggested.
Assign a higher drive letter to the external drive and leave the lower
drive letters right after the hard drives for other devices you might
occasionally attach.

I'm pretty sure Frank got the message considering that he has now
officially been given the same hint three times round

As for Kerry's point regarding network drives, I tend to disagree.
Network drive letter designation is generally a per-region thing. Where I
am from, central Europe, most network drives get assign letters in the F -
H range, whilst when I was working in Tripoli, they assigned drive letters
in the J - L range, and anyway, drive letters are not given automatically
by the system and have to be set manually.

 

[Kerry Brown]

I'm pretty sure Frank got the message considering that he has now
officially been given the same hint three times round

As for Kerry's point regarding network drives, I tend to disagree.
Network drive letter designation is generally a per-region thing. Where I
am from, central Europe, most network drives get assign letters in the F -
H range, whilst when I was working in Tripoli, they assigned drive letters
in the J - L range, and anyway, drive letters are not given automatically
by the system and have to be set manually.

Windows XP defaults to using the highest available drive letter when you
manually map a drive. Using logon scripts a network admin can use any drive
letter they want. The user also has the option of picking any available
drive letter when mapping a drive manually. Most network admins are slowly
switching to the XP default scheme as it alleviates conflicts with external
devices which are becoming more common. Starting at F: is a carry back to
early Novell and Banyan days when DOS was the OS. Back then it was very
unlikely a pc would have more than three storage devices installed. As time
and hardware progressed network admins started moving the starting point up.
It was also common for a while (again with Novell mostly) to use things like
S: for a searchable drive, P: for programs etc.. Many network admins grew up
with these old schemes and have never changed.

In the end it is a matter of personal preference as it is possible to change
drive letters as needed. I have found letting Windows use the lowest letter
and up for external media, map network drives from the highest letter down,
and use middle letters for special purposes to work well in almost all
situations.

 

[Rock]

I'm pretty sure Frank got the message considering that he has now
officially been given the same hint three times round

I don't think so, based on what he wrtoe in his last reply. That's why I
wrote my message.

As for Kerry's point regarding network drives, I tend to disagree.
Network drive letter designation is generally a per-region thing. Where I
am from, central Europe, most network drives get assign letters in the F -
H range, whilst when I was working in Tripoli, they assigned drive letters
in the J - L range, and anyway, drive letters are not given automatically
by the system and have to be set manually.

I suggest you post this to Kerry then. It doesn't matter to me if you
disagree with his post or not.

 

[Bob I]

I'm pretty sure Frank got the message considering that he has now
officially been given the same hint three times round

As for Kerry's point regarding network drives, I tend to disagree.
Network drive letter designation is generally a per-region thing. Where
I am from, central Europe, most network drives get assign letters in
the F - H range, whilst when I was working in Tripoli, they assigned
drive letters in the J - L range, and anyway, drive letters are not
given automatically by the system and have to be set manually.

Sorry but that is incorrect. If left to it's own programming XP will do
the following:
Local drives will be assigned letters starting with A and work toward Z.
Network drives will be assigned starting with Z and work towards A.

The local is obvious, but since most people manually assign network
drives they don't observe the automatic feature. To see this happen
simply replace the drive letter in your NET USE statement with an
astrisk "*" and watch what happens.