How to change drive letters, please?

[Kate]

[XP Home SP3]
I have just installed a USB 2 card reader which can read four types of
cards. Much to my surprise, a drive letter was allocated by Windows
for each slot and, unfortunately, as my external HD was switched off
at the time, its drive letter was given to one of these card reader
slots. To save too much head-scratching as to which is which, I would
like to organise these logically if I can, so that the drives or slots
I use most are closer to the front of the alphabet than the others,
and/or even hint at what they are. Is this possible? For example,
the engineer who set my computer up has allocated "R" for the CD-ROM
drive, and "D" for the DVD burner. Also, is it possible to
remove/disable/uninstall the drive slots on the card reader which I do
not use so that they do not appear in the My Computer Window?

Many thanks
Kate

 

[The Real Truth MVP]

How to change drive letter assignments in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307844

 

[Patrick Keenan]

[XP Home SP3]
I have just installed a USB 2 card reader which can read four types of
cards. Much to my surprise, a drive letter was allocated by Windows
for each slot and, unfortunately, as my external HD was switched off
at the time, its drive letter was given to one of these card reader
slots. To save too much head-scratching as to which is which, I would
like to organise these logically if I can, so that the drives or slots
I use most are closer to the front of the alphabet than the others,
and/or even hint at what they are. Is this possible? For example,
the engineer who set my computer up has allocated "R" for the CD-ROM
drive, and "D" for the DVD burner. Also, is it possible to
remove/disable/uninstall the drive slots on the card reader which I do
not use so that they do not appear in the My Computer Window?

Many thanks
Kate

Right-click on My Computer, choose Manage. One of the last options on the
left is Disk Management. In the right-hand pane, right-click on one of the
drives you want to reassign, and choose "Change Drive Letter and Paths".
You may need to shuffle a few things, for example set those card readers to
S,T, U and V (just to get them out of the way) then rename your external
drive, then re-rename the card readers.

You'll be done in minutes, regardless.

HTH
-pk

 

[Kate]

All done! Many thanks to TRT and Patrick for your help.
Incidentally, I was pleasantly surprised to note that, after I had
changed the letter of my external HD, the letter also changed in a
couple of backup programs where I had used the drive path as the
destination. I had expected to have to manually alter it.

Thanks again
Kate

[XP Home SP3]
I have just installed a USB 2 card reader which can read four types
of
cards. Much to my surprise, a drive letter was allocated by
Windows
for each slot and, unfortunately, as my external HD was switched
off
at the time, its drive letter was given to one of these card reader
slots. To save too much head-scratching as to which is which, I
would
like to organise these logically if I can, so that the drives or
slots
I use most are closer to the front of the alphabet than the others,
and/or even hint at what they are. Is this possible? For example,
the engineer who set my computer up has allocated "R" for the
CD-ROM
drive, and "D" for the DVD burner. Also, is it possible to
remove/disable/uninstall the drive slots on the card reader which I
do
not use so that they do not appear in the My Computer Window?

Many thanks
Kate

Right-click on My Computer, choose Manage. One of the last options
on the left is Disk Management. In the right-hand pane,
right-click on one of the drives you want to reassign, and choose
"Change Drive Letter and Paths". You may need to shuffle a few
things, for example set those card readers to S,T, U and V (just to
get them out of the way) then rename your external drive, then
re-rename the card readers.

You'll be done in minutes, regardless.

HTH
-pk