How to 'lock' drive letters to particular devices in Vista

[pbl]

I have 5 USB devices (2 external drives, 1 flash drive, one CF card reader,
and 1 Sony walkman) that when connected score a drive letter. My problem is
that the drive letters change depending on the order in which the devices
are connected (the first one plugged in gets drive F, then G, etc). This
causes a headache for my backup software SyncBackPro, where I have schemes
set up for my two external hard drives based on drive letters. I can change
the drive letters in Disk Management (Vista Ultimate) but that only sticks
while that device is connected. For instance, if I unplug my primary backup
drive G and connect my flash drive, the flash drive would then become G. Is
there any way of permanently locking a particular device to a particular
drive letter?

 

[DaveD]

After plugging in your USB device, run the command compmgmt.msc

Select Disk Management

Then, Right-click on your drive and Select Change Drive Letter

 

[pbl]

I can do that, bus as I indicate in my question this doesn't stick.

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, pbl.

All I can say is the Old Faithful: It works for me.

In Disk Management, are you assigning letters to the devices? Or to the
partition(s) on those devices? Are you right-clicking on the Volume in the
Volume List (at the top of the screen by default) or on the left column in
the Graphical View (Disk 0, for example)? Are you assigning names to your
volumes, or relying only on "drive" letters?

In my system, Disks 0, 1 and 2 are Hard Disk Drives (divided into more than
a dozen volumes). Disk 3 Removable is my ReadyBoost USB drive,
(semi-)permanently assigned R:. Even if I remove the USB key and insert it
into a different USB port, it keeps the letter R:. Disk 4 Removable is my
SanDisk single-slot SD card reader and it is always Drive S:. Just now it
was empty (No Media), but was still identified as S:; I inserted an SD card
and Windows recognized it and offered to read the files on S:. I unplugged
the USB cable from its port on the back of the computer; Disk 4 disappeared
from Disk Management. I plugged the cable into a 4-port hub; Disk 4
appeared again and, as soon as I clicked on it, the letter S: appeared
again. (Then I restored the plug to the back of the case; situation normal
again.)

I always label each of my volumes and devices; the labels (names) get
written to the HD or USB device and remain constant no matter whether I'm
running WinXP, Vista or Win7. They don't shift like drive letters when I
reboot to a different OS. Even back in MS-DOS days, we used "vol" to write
volume names onto the disks; in Disk Management, right-click on the volume,
then Properties, then type a name into the unlabeled box near the top of the
window.

But I've never used USB external hard drives - except for the flash drives.
Maybe they behave differently.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
Windows Live Mail 2009 (14.0.8064.0206) in Win7 Ultimate x64 7000

 

[Danny Krychek]

Hi, pbl.

All I can say is the Old Faithful: It works for me.

In Disk Management, are you assigning letters to the devices? Or to the
partition(s) on those devices? Are you right-clicking on the Volume in the
Volume List (at the top of the screen by default) or on the left column in
the Graphical View (Disk 0, for example)? Are you assigning names to your
volumes, or relying only on "drive" letters?

In my system, Disks 0, 1 and 2 are Hard Disk Drives (divided into more than
a dozen volumes). Disk 3 Removable is my ReadyBoost USB drive,
(semi-)permanently assigned R:. Even if I remove the USB key and insert it
into a different USB port, it keeps the letter R:. Disk 4 Removable is my
SanDisk single-slot SD card reader and it is always Drive S:. Just now it
was empty (No Media), but was still identified as S:; I inserted an SD card
and Windows recognized it and offered to read the files on S:. I unplugged
the USB cable from its port on the back of the computer; Disk 4 disappeared
from Disk Management. I plugged the cable into a 4-port hub; Disk 4
appeared again and, as soon as I clicked on it, the letter S: appeared
again. (Then I restored the plug to the back of the case; situation normal
again.)

I always label each of my volumes and devices; the labels (names) get
written to the HD or USB device and remain constant no matter whether I'm
running WinXP, Vista or Win7. They don't shift like drive letters when I
reboot to a different OS. Even back in MS-DOS days, we used "vol" to write
volume names onto the disks; in Disk Management, right-click on the volume,
then Properties, then type a name into the unlabeled box near the top of the
window.

But I've never used USB external hard drives - except for the flash drives.
Maybe they behave differently.

RC

External hard drives work the same way, as long as all the internals
are assigned.

I can even end up with my flash drives being the same, as long as I
have them all plugged in when I set the drive letters AND as long as I
always plug them into the same port after that.

 

[Gary M]

Network shares might be a good option to use. The location (the URL) doesn't
change if the drive letter changes.
I don't know if your backup software can do network URL addresses, but if it
does, then that could solve your problem.

 

[Uwe Sieber]

I have 5 USB devices (2 external drives, 1 flash drive, one CF card
reader, and 1 Sony walkman) that when connected score a drive letter. My
problem is that the drive letters change depending on the order in which
the devices are connected (the first one plugged in gets drive F, then
G, etc). This causes a headache for my backup software SyncBackPro,
where I have schemes set up for my two external hard drives based on
drive letters. I can change the drive letters in Disk Management (Vista
Ultimate) but that only sticks while that device is connected. For
instance, if I unplug my primary backup drive G and connect my flash
drive, the flash drive would then become G. Is there any way of
permanently locking a particular device to a particular drive letter?

Drive letters are saved but they are not reserved while
a drive is not attached. They are recycled then and the
assignment to the former drive is lost.
If you manually assing high letters then they are far
away from the default letter which is the lowest free
one.

Alternatively you can install my "USB Drive Letter Manager"
to get full control over the drive letters. But it's a
bit work to configure it.
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html


Uwe