OT - How to make a Drive letter stick ..

PeterWright wrote on 12/14/2009, 9:11 PM
My CD Rom Authoring program, Mediator, which is otherwise excellent, does not have the Vegas function of letting you know about missing files then once pointed to the new location finding everything.

I'm working on a big project on an external drive, so I can use it with laptop at the Client's office occasionally. The external drive acquires a different letter depending on which PC it's attached to.

Is there a way to give it a fixed Letter which will apply no matter what it's attached to?

And if so, can this be applied without re-formatting?

Thanks for any help.
Peter

Comments

johnmeyer wrote on 12/14/2009, 9:49 PM
I'm not sure whether you can force a letter to work on all computers. For instance, if you connect an external drive to a computer where another drive already has claimed that letter, you can't do anything.

However, try this:

1. Connect your drive to a computer.

2. Go to the Run option in the Start menu.

3. In the Run box type:

diskmgmt.msc

4. At the bottom of the Disk Management dialog you should see your drives, with numbers next to them. Find the external drive you want to force to have the same letter. Right-click on the drive box (NOT header on the left side) and select "Change Drive Letter and Path." Remove any existing drive letter, and then add a new one. Make sure there is only one drive letter when you are finished. Click on OK.

Then, disconnect the drive and try taking it to another computer. Let me know if this works.
JackW wrote on 12/14/2009, 10:31 PM
Peter, if John's method doesn't work, another way to deal with this is to name the drive. Then, no matter what letter is assigned by the computer, the name of the drive will always show up the same.

Jack
PeterWright wrote on 12/14/2009, 10:37 PM
Thanks John - I tried this, and although it changed it on the first computer ok, it reverted to another letter on a second.

BUT, I guess I could use this process to rename the drive first, each time I connect it to a new computer.

OR - and I'll get back on this - maybe if I did this separately on each computer, the new Drive letter (I've chosen "T") will reappear whenever the drive is connected to that machine.

Peter
rmack350 wrote on 12/14/2009, 10:48 PM
The key to this is to assign the drive letter "Z" to the drive. Windows automatically assigns drive letters starting at A: so the upper letters are almost never claimed, unless you're connecting your drive to my computer.

Rob Mack
Grazie wrote on 12/14/2009, 11:22 PM
I can vouch for Rob's advise. I learnt this from Johnny Rofrano too.

While I was renaming my external firewire drives I used the Z as a way to force a new letter-set of drives and worked back down to "M", with A > H being on the internals and I > M being my Firewire externals.

Hell only knows what I need to do when I plop in my new Drive-Caddie??!?

Grazie
PeterWright wrote on 12/14/2009, 11:29 PM
Thanks John, Jack and Rob.

I've now assigned letter "T" to the external drive separately on every computer, and it now assumes this letter wherever it is connected - just what I wanted.

Jack - thanks, but changing just the name would not have helped the CD Authoring program locate the files unless the Address letter was constant, which it now is.

Thanks again
Peter
PeterWright wrote on 12/15/2009, 12:19 AM
Hey Grazie - yes, it's strange territory seeing those "later" drive letters - I chose "T" for this drive as the client's name begins with T - easy to remember for an old brain!

I do have Drives auto named up to "L" on one machine, but this includes are several vacant "removable drives", which are in fact USB sockets.
farss wrote on 12/15/2009, 12:28 AM
I had hoped I had a better answer which was to use the Universal Naming Convention. That however means you have to specify the full path to the folder including the server name. Clearly not much help when you connect the drive to a different machine.
I'm no wizard on this, maybe someone else who knows more about the subtle points of Windows can expand on this.

Bob.
PeterWright wrote on 12/15/2009, 12:37 AM
Thanks Bob - it's now fixed. I followed John Meyer's steps separately on 3 different PCs and each now recognises the external drive as "T" and consequently finds the data files wherever I open the project.
Chienworks wrote on 12/15/2009, 3:37 AM
But "Z:" isn't the last drive letter. There are 29 of them, not 26. After "Z:" comes "[:", "]:", and "^:".

At least this is true in DOS. I haven't done any checking to see if any of the Windows management tools support these last three "letters" or not.
Grazie wrote on 12/15/2009, 3:46 AM
Since when was "[:", "]:", and "^:". letters? Huh uhu Huh!?

Does that make me a programmer?

Grazie
Chienworks wrote on 12/15/2009, 4:34 AM
Don't ask me. It's a Microsoft thang. I just report the facts.
TheHappyFriar wrote on 12/15/2009, 5:38 AM
it's a drive name, not a letter. The "name" that's next to the "letter" is the label. :D

I've never been able to have a drive keep the same name when switching between computers. How'd you get it done? I made my external F & when I bring it to my wife's comp it changed to the next character available. I manually changed it to F on her comp & now it stays that, but it never automatically assigned the character I wanted.
rmack350 wrote on 12/15/2009, 9:05 AM
Kelly Sez: But "Z:" isn't the last drive letter. There are 29 of them, not 26. After "Z:" comes "[:", "]:", and "^:".


Oooh! I didn't know that.

I can imagine the hours of troubleshooting that will occur after I hand a coworker a drive that's assigned to "[:"

Rob

rmack350 wrote on 12/15/2009, 9:11 AM
Read the thread, HTF.

We're suggesting that you assign a very high letter to the removable drive, like "Z:", for example.

You'll probably never have a conflict if you do this.

Grazie, if you're using a tray then only one of the drives will be there at any time. You could name them all "Z:" if you wanted, although this might also get confusing.

Rob
Grazie wrote on 12/15/2009, 9:21 AM
Ah! Thanks Rob. - g
rmack350 wrote on 12/15/2009, 11:25 AM
Happy to help.

I'm not sure if you'd like having all your drives in the same removable dock use the same drive letter, but it'd work. If you get a second dock then this system would fall apart because two of the discs could be in the PC at the same time. One would get bumped off the drive letter.

If you've got a lot of drives I'd consider putting a paper label on them listing the drive letter, volume label, date first used, and whatever else you might want to know.

Rob
farss wrote on 12/15/2009, 11:54 AM
Which is why all my drives have different names e.g. iSATA01, iSATA02, eSATA01. Each drive is physically labelled using the Brother P-Touch labeller. This is the only one to use, use the metal foil labels. I use the the same labels for SxS cards, the laminated labels are too thick.

If only there was a way in Windows / Vegas to reference drives by name, you can do it with networked drives but not local drives. Well I can't fathom a way to do it with local drives.

Bob.
Chienworks wrote on 12/15/2009, 12:40 PM
You can use network names with local drives. Share your local drives and then your computer with those drives shows up in network neighborhood. "\\computer name\share name" works just fine even when "computer name" is your local machine.

There is a performance penalty for doing this, but most of it is in navigating the directory structure. Actual data transfers shouldn't be affected too badly.
rmack350 wrote on 12/15/2009, 5:27 PM
Just keep in mind that, for windows systems, the drive will still get a drive letter on the host system (this is really only 80% true since you can mount an entire volume as if it were a directory folder, in which case it doesn't get a drive letter.)

The point is that those networked drives still get and need drive letters if they're on a Windows system.

By the way, if you're using networked drives and have them set up to mount as a drive letter, other removable drives can steal their letter assignment if you plug in the removable before you've browsed that mounted share. First come, first served, evidently. Another reason to map everything to upper letters. Ideally, you just need to leave some space down around E:, F:, G:, etc for those unexpected removable drives like the occasional thumb drive. Leaving three or four slots free ought to be plenty.

Rob Mack