Community Newsletter: Q&A: How do I stop Windows from reassigning my external drive letters?
- 4/11/08 12:57 PM
Windows Drive Letters
by M Blazer - 3/22/08 4:08 AM In reply to: How do I stop Windows from reassigning my external drive letters? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
First, the two WRONG answers:
-1. "Buy a MAC." Get off your high horse! The user has a WINDOWS problems and needs it fixed.
-2. "Live with it." Computers are our tools not our masters.
I have a similar setup and don't have this problem. My flash drives always come up with the letters I have assigned. I'm not sure what, exactly, is causing your problem, but here is how I setup a new drive:
1. Insert the flash/USB drive then open Windows Explorer. Right-click on the drive letter and select Rename. Give the device a unique name. It can be useful ("Legal Docs") or trivial ("3rd Drive"), but it needs to be unique.
2. Assign the Drive letter.
My guess is that Windows is not seeing these devices as unique and when the second device is detected, it just gets the next drive letter. By naming the device, Windows can form a more permanent association. I see this same behavior with USB serial ports. If the device has a built in serial number, it will get the same COMx number each time. If not, it'll get a new number every time it's installed on a different USB port/hub.
Good Luck
Build it - it's really fun (and can be frustrating)
by Irelands child - 3/22/08 9:23 AM In reply to: Windows Drive Letters by M BlazerI've had several Dell's, 3 IBM's, 1 Hp's and one homemade prior to this one.
This build was very interesting since the first one I built 15 or so years ago. Most components are what ever you want to spend, now that the shape, form and functions become standard to a form factor. All you need to do now is determine how "much" of a unit you want. I'm also somewhat budget limited. Keeping this in mind, I spent a good many hours determining what I needed. Without boring terminology, I'm middle of the road, have a pretty big hard drive, a medium large external drive, a couple gigs RAM and a good photo processing capability. This means that I can fix my pictures easily and quickly, get on the internet - fast!! I can run Open Office or MS Office - fast - and even play a couple of relatively easy games. What did I spend - about $750, which included a new 19" Samsung monitor (my one mistake - should have spent $50 more for a 22" version), keyboard, mouse, case with 500 watt power supply, expandable mobo and a reasonable graphics card.
Could I use more - of course - but only to stoke my ego in that I could have the biggest and baddest - and I'm not enthralled with gaming so it sure isn't necessary.
Assign drive letters in Computer Management
by hpoliver - 3/22/08 10:06 AM In reply to: How do I stop Windows from reassigning my external drive letters? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I use the approach recommended by mcstanley (post #13.) At least for me, assigning drives using the disk management tool works every time -- and the letters stay assinged. One thing to be careful off is to make sure that you first assign any network drives that you log into either in your office or by virtual private network when your at a home office or on the road. Otherwise, it seems to work just fine.
Not perfect but a workaround
by jdjones57 - 3/22/08 5:29 PM In reply to: How do I stop Windows from reassigning my external drive letters? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
While this may not be the perfect solution, it is a workaround. If your main concern is to setup desktop icons to the drives you are adding, don't use the drive letter to refer to them. You can set up a UTC icon that isn't dependent on the drive letter to point to the drive. An example would be if you have a drive that the "Volume Label" of the drive is something like "Multimedia" (or whatever you set the volume label to), then you can create an icon that points to the drive with \\{computer_name}\{volume_label . For example, lets say you've named your computer "JOHN" and have a removable drive with a volume label of "MULTIMEDIA", you can create an icon that points to \\JOHN\MULTIMEDIA and that icon will always point to that particular drive no matter what drive letter is assigned.
Fix to Reassigning Drive Letters
by Ninibean - 3/24/08 1:51 PM In reply to: How do I stop Windows from reassigning my external drive letters? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I am one who is very fond of usb devices so I don't have to have the hassles of IRQ problems.
I have a gazillion (exaggerated of course) usb devices and yes windows will assign letters automatically. However, here is how you fix that:
Depending on how you are working, whether inserting your usb devices one at a time or trying to reassign what is already in there here is what you do,
One at a time: Plug in your USB device and then check under my computer and see what letter is being assigned. If it is not what you want, take these steps
1) Start
2) Control Panel
3) Administrative Tools
4) Computer Management
5) Disc Management on the left side
6) Bottom Right window find the device you want to reassign the letter to
7) Right click on that box
8) You will then see a drop down box of which you will select "change drive letter"
9) Then you will get another drop down box which will show you all available drive letters and select one. Windows will give you some kind of warning but just hit OK anyway.
If you have multiple drives already hooked up and you know which ones are a specific size/type, then you can still follow the same steps as above.
It is easiest to turn off all of your external drives if already hooked up and just turn them on one at a time to check their drive letter under "My Computer" and then go through the steps to reassign the letters.
This is how I do it with Windows XP Home.
I hope this helps.
I think they already do that.
by DADSGETNDOWN - 3/24/08 6:41 PM In reply to: Fix to Reassigning Drive Letters by NinibeanI think they already do that or something similar.
The problem I believe, is,
They unplug the device, and go away for a day or 2 or 3, and the
computer gets turned off and on, when it reboots it has to
RE-Discover drives, and it can't find certain things so it
RE Assigns drive letters, so even if you come back wit the original
devices it's all fubar, and they have to go through the steps you mentioned again and again.
Reassignment of Drive Letters
by Ninibean - 3/24/08 7:25 PM In reply to: I think they already do that. by DADSGETNDOWNWell, if the person is going away for a few days, why would they unplug their devices? They should just turn them off then and then turn off the computer. I keep most of my drives turned off anyway, especially the drive that is the exact duplicate of my C drive JUST in case something happens and I can just switch the external drive with the internal drive and carry on as if nothing ever happened.
I haven't had any trouble with the drives that are shut off and then turned back on. They still have their correct assigned leters. There is only one thing that stumbled me and it was when I installed Power ISO. That program will automatically assign you another cd drive. Took me a while to figure out what the heck was going on. I just made sure I changed that drive to E drive so that the normal cd drive D was in the correct line of things.
Just for the heck of it, the drive that I assigned "X" to has been off for a long time. I just turned it on and checked and it still came back on as "X" drive. They just need to leave the usb pluged in (if they have the number of usb ports to do so)and then just turn the power off to that device.
You can easily purchase internal set of usb ports which has some in the front and some in the back of your computer if you have a spare bay to install it.
To DADSGETNDOWN
by MarkFlax - 3/25/08 4:13 AM
In reply to: Reassignment of Drive Letters by Ninibean
I removed your post, the reply to Ninebean's response above.
Sorry, but name calling doesn't work in these forums. Many find it offensive. Me too. Plenty can be said without such words or language.
Ninebean your reply fell by the wayside as well, as it became an orphan post.
Mark
Is Autorun an option?
by TreknologyNet - 3/26/08 11:07 PM In reply to: Reassignment of Drive Letters by NinibeanI mentioned previously that automatic drive letter assignment is a problem with fixed hardware as well.
Install Office from you D:CDROM. Everything's fine. Later, you install a new hard drive which becomes D: and bumps your CDROM up to E:
Now you want to modify your Office installation, except that it won't let you because it can't find the CD on drive letter D:
The OP suggests that these desired drive letters for specific USB sticks are unique to the one computer rather than shuffling them around a network.
Surely there's someone out there with enough smarts to write an autorun.exe that can be set up to retain a drive letter T: and automatically change the letter allocation each time it is plugged in?
I will also break the rules by asking a different but related question. My HP laptop physically has FOUR USB2 ports. At times, when I plug a device in, I get a message telling me I'm plugging a high speed device into a 1.1 port, yet there aren't any! When I follow through the hardware list there are up to ELEVEN USB ports listed, three of which are 1.1 the other eight being 2.0. This phenomenon has notably occurred on two desktop machines as well. Have I stumbled on a "USB CRIPPLE" virus?
Answer from someone who has same problem
by rachit20012 - 3/31/08 12:16 AM In reply to: How do I stop Windows from reassigning my external drive letters? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I too have a external hard disk onto which all my softwares are installed.Windows XP many at times renaims their name. In such cases I run system restore to restore that drive name back. Many at times it works many times not.But you can also leave that settings as system automaticaly links the previous settings(drive letter) to new setting(drive letter).
A possible solution...
by BBoydgrl - 4/12/08 1:53 AM In reply to: How do I stop Windows from reassigning my external drive letters? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Hello,
I'm not a computer whiz, however, I was wondering if possibly changing your security settings might help solve this problem, and you may have to log onto your computer as an administrator to do this, so that the changes will remain. Just a thought.
A semi-permanent solution
by crabby1 - 4/12/08 2:30 PM In reply to: How do I stop Windows from reassigning my external drive letters? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
When a drive letter is assigned to a drive, it will be unchanged until either you or Windows assigns the letter to another drive.
Here is the method that works for me. When I first use a new external drive, I change the drive letter to something that I will remember for that drive, e.g. "R" for the red flash drive, "W" for the Western Digital one, "S" for the SimpleDrive. The most important part of this step is to always choose a letter near the end of the alphabet. Since it is highly unlikely that I will ever have enough drives attached at one time that Windows would assign drive letter R, for instance, the drive letters I have assigned "stick."
To assign the drive letter you want, attach the drive, then right click on My Computer, choose Manage, Storage, and Disk Management. Right click the drive letter you want to change, select Change Drive Letter and Paths, click Change, and assign the desired letter.
Assign the drive letter manually
by bobc47 - 4/13/08 6:43 AM In reply to: How do I stop Windows from reassigning my external drive letters? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I use the same external usb drive on a couple of my win2k machines. All I did was to assign the external drive to R: (removable). When I want to back up I just connect the drive, wait for it to be recognized, and proceed with my backups. I have a shortcut on my desktops that automatically backs the data up to the correct subdirectory for that particular machine.
Because this is outside the normal drive assignments (A:, C: D: E: in my case) windows never tries to screw around with the external drives assignment.
Simliar Problem- Found Solution That Works w/XP
by lenny425 - 4/15/08 11:42 AM In reply to: How do I stop Windows from reassigning my external drive letters? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
We had a similar problem using flash drives for daily backups. After assigning and re-checking the "sharing & permissions" and the "constant drive not found" message from our backup spftware: we realized that to "LOCK" the drive letter regardless of the letter assigned when it was plugged-in, we needed to MOUNT a volume in an empty NTSF folder. In short, every time the flash drive was plugged in it would be assigned to the same ghost folder that only existed when the drive was plugged in! These may seem apparent to some but this is how we did it:
Plug in drive/right click my computer,manage/disk management/right click the usb drive/change drive letter and paths/add/mount in the following empty NTSF folder/browse/navigate to a folder/new folder/and name it something like zip z for example. To use the drive you navigate to that folder on your hard drive rather than the drive letter for the flash drive. Worked like a charm for us for several different flash drives. We are using this fix on a network so drive letters were a sensitive issue!
After the fact - Reassigning Drive Letters
by dougcouch - 1/19/09 10:27 AM In reply to: How do I stop Windows from reassigning my external drive letters? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I found this on a blog (2005, anonymous user)...so it's not my own. BUT...it is built into windows already and works simply and easily. I have run into this automatic reassign issue over and over, and in the past, just had to change all my links to match the new assignment...ouch.
Using WinXP Home (with Start menu in "Classic?" view...whichever shows the Run command line...
============
If you want drives to retain certain letters, your best option
is to start at the end of the alphabet. Go into Disk
Management, (Start -> Run -> diskmgmt.msc), and right click
your USB drives and select "Change Drive Letters and Paths...".
Make one Y and the other Z. Windows should reassign the
appropriate letter whenever you plug in your USB drives. Make
sure to adjust your backup program accordingly.
My note: This will work on any drive letter. The using Z etc is
just to prevent future reassignments from occurring, a good idea
but beyond simply fixing the problem at hand. - Doug
Now my F drive is my F drive once again...and took just a few seconds and no excessive techie hassling.
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