Community Newsletter: Q&A: How do I stop Windows from reassigning my external drive letters?
- 4/11/08 12:57 PM
Changing letters of drives
by mcstanley - 3/15/08 8:00 AM In reply to: How do I stop Windows from reassigning my external drive letters? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
How to assign a drive letter
To assign a drive letter to a drive, a partition, or a volume, follow these steps:
1. Log on as Administrator or as a member of the Administrators group.
2. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then click Performance and Maintenance.
Note If you do not see Performance and Maintenance, go to step 3. Performance and Maintenance appears in Control Panel only if you use Category view. If you use Classic view, Performance and Maintenance does not appear.
3. Click Administrative Tools, double-click Computer Management, and then click Disk Management in the left pane.
4. Right-click the drive, the partition, the logical drive, or the volume that you want to assign a drive letter to, and then click Change Drive Letter and Paths.
5. Click Add.
6. Click Assign the following drive letter if it is not already selected, and then either accept the default drive letter or click the drive letter that you want to use.
7. Click OK.
This is the solution
by sarahg1975 - 3/21/08 8:55 PM In reply to: Changing letters of drives by mcstanleyRead the one above my message labeled "Changing letters of drives". This is the correct solution. Are you paying attention CNET? Using the Computer administrator to change the drive letter to the one you want sets that drive letter in place for the drive. Windows will remember when you unplug the drive and replug it back into the system at anytime. Even if you put the drive in a different external case windows will still remember the drive letter.
Changing letters of drives
by Tiesenhausen - 4/11/08 8:00 PM In reply to: Changing letters of drives by mcstanleymcstanley's reply is the solution that works. I set my three identical flash drives this way. Windows XP now always recognizes these drives as P, Q, and R, and knows which one is Library, which one is Photos, and so on. Furthermore, I can now make shortcuts in any folder on my hard drive to open any folder or file on any of the three flash drives. If the flash drive is removed, I just get an error message, but as soon as I plug the flash drive in, all the icons and shortcuts will still be there and still work.
Many thanks. mcstanley's solution seems to have been overlooked when the responses to this problem were summarized. Most of the responses don't even seem to have understood the question.
Tiesenhausen
Drive Letterring
by Lights1912 - 3/15/08 8:37 AM In reply to: How do I stop Windows from reassigning my external drive letters? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Unfortunately, each time you connect and disconnect an external drive, Windows will re-assign a letter to it based on the order it is attached. In other words, if you plug in your Toshiba HD first, your WD second and your thumb drive third the Toshiba will be assigned the first available letter, then the WD and finally the thumb drive. If you plug the WD in first it will be given the first available letter assignment.
There are three options:
1) Mount the drives in the same order each time you plug them in. This will maintain the drive letters.
2) Keep the drives plugged in and only remove the one you need at the time.
3) Mount the drives in a folder partition on your hard drive. Below are the instructions on how to do this. Although the English is a bit shaky, it gives you the idea. You can access this at http://www.mydigitallife.info/2008/02/19/how-to-mount-and-access-new-partition-volume-or-drive-as-folder-path-in-windows/
Hope this helps.
1. Click on Start Menu, then select Run. In Vista, press Win+R key to open Run command.
2. Type DiskMgmt.msc to open Disk Management.
3. Right click on the new hard disk or remaining unallocated space, and then select New Partition or New Simple Volume (in Vista). If the partition has been created, delete the partition and re-create it.
For partition that has been allocated with drive letter and path, right click on the partition and select Change Drive Letter and Paths.
4. In the “New Simple Volume Wizard” or “New Partition Wizard”, follow the instructions on screen such as selecting the size of the new partition, until the the Assign Drive Letter or Path screen.
For existing volume/partition, click on Add button to add a new path instead.
5. Select Mount in the following empty NTFS folder radio button, and then select Browse… button.
For existing volume/partition, the “Mount in the following empty NTFS folder” is automatically selected. Users cannot assign more than one drive letter to a partition, but can assign many paths (folders) to a partition.
6. Select an empty folder that you want to mount this new partition. Click on New Folder to create a new directory if needed. Once selected the mounting folder, click OK button.
7. For existing partition already with drive letter, process is completed and users can now open Windows Explorer to browse the partition content in the mounted folder.
Else, back in the wizard, continue to follow instructions on screen to complete the wizard by selecting file system, allocation unit size, volume label, decide whether to perform quick format or whether to enable file and folder compression. Wait for the disk formatting to complete too. After process completed, a folder is linked to the partition/volume.
As mentioned, users can assigned many folder path to a single volume or partition. Users can also remove the relationship of folder mount point with volume at any time, or change back to a drive letter. Even already mounted on a folder path, a drive letter can still be assigned to the partition too. All these administrative operations can be done on the Disk Management. Best of all, changing drive letter or folder paths of a volume will not delete the data on the drive.
Use DiskPart...
by fjord_fox - 3/15/08 10:08 AM In reply to: How do I stop Windows from reassigning my external drive letters? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I have found that the best utility to switch drive letters is DiskPart, which is found in Windows. Other methods will work for a while, but it seems that they all seem to change over time. Since I have shifted to this method, I have never had it change drive letters on me, so it seems more secure, although it is a little tricky to do.
First, click on the Start button, click on "Run...", and type in "cmd" (without the quotes). When the Command Window opens, type in "diskpart". From here, you can type in a question mark like "?" and hit the Enter key and it will show you a list of valid commands. For this exercise, we are going to use "List Volume", "Select", and "Assign".
Now type in "list vol". This shows all of your drives and what drive letters they have. In the last column on the right, the INFO column, you will notice that on one of them, it says SYSTEM. This should be your C:\ drive. That drive should stay as it is, so whatever letter it has, leave it that way. If you change that drive letter, it will screw up Windows so it will not work anymore.
To change the drive letter, it is a two-step process for each drive letter you want to change. Let's say you want to change drive D:\ to drive V:\. Then you would type in "Select volume d" and hit the enter key. Then you need to type in "assign letter v" and hit the enter key. It should give you a message telling you that it is done. Read that message, because sometimes, it may say that you have to re-boot before it can finish the job, or if it is a drive letter that you cannot use, it will tell you so and give you the reason that it cannot be used.
Now, to make sure that it worked, type in "list volume" and hit the Enter key. Check and make sure that your D:\ drive is, in fact, now your V:\ drive.
Do this for each of the drives that you wish to change.
To fix a problem with your windows based PC
by hangtownvp - 3/15/08 11:42 AM In reply to: How do I stop Windows from reassigning my external drive letters? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Buy a MAC and you will never have such problems. time is money and with windows they waste time trying to find or fix problems that should never happen. I have been using PC's for almost 30 years and I found with a MAC you have no problems and if one does arise Apple makes sure to render the problem with outstanding support and help with your system. Apple has taken the problems out of using a windows based PC and given us a computer that does what it should with the speed and accuracy that everyone wants. Plus with todays MAC's you can have both windows and MAC based programs on the same system, but over time you will drop the windows programs and find the apple programs out perform windows by lightening speeds. This will give you more time to enjoy day and less time worrying about losing data or fixing some bug that has wasted your time. TRY A MAC AND YOU WILL NEVER GO BACK.
Have a great day
hangtown video
...buy a Mac?
by rlessmue - 3/15/08 4:13 PM In reply to: To fix a problem with your windows based PC by hangtownvpLook, I know you are trying to help someone who has a PC problem but the solution you provided is not a logical one...
unless you plan to BUY him a Mac!
Are you?!!!
(It's like telling someone - that because their car is not running right, they should not have bought that car and should have bought a different one!)
psst
by puma - 3/21/08 8:09 PM In reply to: ...buy a Mac? by rlessmueit's about cutting your losses short before it is too late...
Live with it...
by alswilling - 3/15/08 12:07 PM In reply to: How do I stop Windows from reassigning my external drive letters? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Whenever a removable drive is plugged into the USB port of a machine running Windows, Windows automatically assigns the next available drive letter. Since on most Windows XP machines with a single internal hard drive and one CD or DVD player/recorder installed, C:\ drive is the default assignment of the primary drive containing the operating system and system files, D:\ is the partition containing the recovery files, and E:\ is the CD or DVD player/recorder. Using that scenario, the next available drive designation would be F:\. The letter designation assigned to an external storage device depends on how many internal hard drives and CD/DVD drives one has installed.
As long as the external drives are plugged into the USB port, the drive letters that you specified will remain assigned to those drives. However, when you unplug the drives, Windows does away with those drive letter assignments; because the drives no longer exist on the machine. When an external storage device is plugged in, then Windows does what it was designed to do: it assigns the next available drive designation to the "new" device.
Why not just go with the flow--live with it? If you plug in the same devices in the same order each time, then the drive letter designations will remain the same each time you plug them in.
That is the easiest solution and the short answer.
SORRY I FIND 'LIVE WITH IT" UNACCEPTABLE -- WORST ANSWER
by peter4012 - 3/21/08 8:50 PM In reply to: Live with it... by alswillingThats the problem, and has been getting worse due to people who 'live with it' MinoMo has been pumping out overgrown junk programing/OS's that force us to jump through hoops to use a simple computer which was supposed to serve us - not become our master
If we'd quit 'living with it' maybee the problem would get fixed
But there is no problem to be fixed
by DADSGETNDOWN - 3/21/08 11:56 PM In reply to: SORRY I FIND 'LIVE WITH IT" UNACCEPTABLE -- WORST ANSWER by peter4012Do you think it should assign a new drive letter if you RE-connect
the same devices in the same place in the same order ?
That makes no sense.
If it RE-Assigned a drive letter under those conditions,
THAT would be jumping through hoops. to find and realize that the
drive letter had been changed.
It "serves" us perfectly and logically in this manner.
This reply was not thought out, and must have got hung up on the
"why not live with it?" phrase.
Stop being so negative and illogical.
and pump us out a not so overgrown junk programmed OS.
Boy did we miss each other here ?
by peter4012 - 3/22/08 12:56 AM In reply to: But there is no problem to be fixed by DADSGETNDOWNDadsgetndown
somehow I know we are on the same page, but not reading it the same way
That was my whole point "living with it'" windows arbitrary re-assigning of drive letters is unacceptable, therfore I found the suggestion to which I responded 'unacceptable' - so I am confused about your response
One should once and for all be able to asign specific drive letters to speciffic periferals - period - windows actually keeps track od serial numbers of USB items plugged in at various times - U can look them up - so why can't windows be taught to match drive letters to serial numbers - seems so simple - but MiniMe will never figur it out -they realy don't care what you and I want or need - as long as they can covince us to upgrade... stop buying -- they'll figure it out
sorry I will waste one more reply
by peter4012 - 3/22/08 1:10 AM In reply to: But there is no problem to be fixed by DADSGETNDOWNDADSGETNDOWN
You feel I missinterpited the statement to which I replied - please read it again - it clearly suggests that the best/easiest solution is to live with it and just plug in all your perifferals in the same sequence in the same ports and than the problem is solved - Illogical - I may not even have enough ports for those periferals and be swapping periferals - so another solution is needed - and that was the Original posts request - living with it was not an option desired.
Re re your request that I re-write a les bloated - more efficient OS - two things - I never claimed to be a master programmer or I would have done so, secondly others have done so and been squshed by MS's marketing machine - and as an additional thought - what to you really and I mean really get for 2.5 Gig of XP-pro that I didn't have with 2.5 meg of win 3.1 - I mean stuff I want - not stuff I'm stuck with even though other 3rd party programs are better - trust me if is was code written is would be 1/10th the size and 10 times faster and that much I do know - a code written c-64 program swapped menues faster than windows does (I wrote one) so would could a code written program do on a 3GHz dual-pent ???? it be fun to find out
living with it
by haf canadian - 3/22/08 12:56 PM In reply to: sorry I will waste one more reply by peter4012I think the point was not just that he loses the assignment when he unplugs a device, but also by default of such action he loses the parameters he set up for accessing it. Therein lies his real beef. To "just live with it" is no simple hassle for him. Plugging the same device back into the same port is okay (though perhaps multiple devices have to be in the same order if Windows assigns by "next available"), but he'll still have to re-instruct Windows about access specifics/preferences each time. I suggest he read the answer by "bus".
telly correct
by peter4012 - 3/22/08 10:42 PM In reply to: living with it by haf canadianyes the assigning is secomdarry - actually no one would give a hoot if it didn't create program/data finding functions - WICH I CAN'T LIVE WITH
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