NOT displaying/showing drive letters of USB/removable media partitions in WinExplorer ?

[Uwe Sieber]

On a new computer system with pre-installed WinXP I can see a lot of drive letters
in Windows Explorer for all USB and removable drives. Since this computer has
4 USB drives and 1 for a Memory Stick there are always 5 drive letters

with no contents (No external USB Stick or Memory card is currently plugged in).

I don't want to see all these drive letters. Is there a way to let them only appear
when a card/stick is plugged in ?

No. But you can remove the letters and access the slots
thru folders on an NTFS formatted drive.

Create a base folder for the card reader like
C:\CardReader

Then create there on folder for each slot of the reader.
C:\CardReader\CompactFlash
C:\CardReader\SD_MMC
C:\CardReader\MemStick
C:\CardReader\SmartMedia

The change the Letters to these folders:

Right-click 'My Computer' -> 'Manage', select
'Disk Management', right-click on the drive ->
'Change Drive Letter and Paths...',
click 'Change'...

But have to know which slot has which letter to
change them to the folder with the right name...


There is a faster way. I've written a small commandline
tool that simplifies the process described above.
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/files/mscr2folder.zip
(Multi Slot Card Reader to folder)

Create the folder C:\CardReader, then open a command
prompt, change to folder where you have unzipped the
MSCR2Folder.EXE too and enter
MSCR2Folder E: C:\CardReader

E: is one of the letters currently assingned to the
multislot card reader - no matter which one.

It creates then one sub folder for each slot using their
device names. Better readers have 'talking' names like
'USB2.0 CF_MD', 'USB2.0 SD_MMC' and so on. Slots of junk
readers have all the same, non talking name like 'USB USB',
'Generic USB', 'General Flash Disk'. MSCR2Folder adds
numbers then.


Greetings from Germany

Uwe

 

[Thommy Kanther]

On a new computer system with pre-installed WinXP I can see a lot of drive letters
in Windows Explorer for all USB and removable drives. Since this computer has
4 USB drives and 1 for a Memory Stick there are always 5 drive letters

E:, F:, G:, H:, I:

with no contents (No external USB Stick or Memory card is currently plugged in).

I don't want to see all these drive letters. Is there a way to let them only appear
when a card/stick is plugged in ?

Thommy

 

[Guest]

You must have a very special driver for the USB drives. With the standard
driver the letter would not show until connected. The memory stick sockets
differ of course, I see them all the time and I'd rather not see them when no
stick is attached!

 

[Guest]

But you could create a searchpath on your c: via disk manager and then delete
the letter designation. I just now did so with my SD-socket, which was named
F:. I made it c:\memories\SD, plugged in a stick and it worked. Nota bene, it
might not work with some special programs for reading photographic data or
so. Has anybody tried it?

 

[Guest]

But you will of course never see a letter even if you plug in a stick. But
you might create a convenient shortcut for it somewhere where it would not
disturb as much...