Reserving A Drive Letter For An External Enclosure

[dserban 0]

I have the following setup on my PC:- An external USB connected hard drive / enclosure;- Several USB memory sticks of which I'm using one or two or none at a given point in time;- 2 pieces of software for mounting ISO images where I would like to have a variable number of configured drive letters.My objective is to reserve a fixed drive letter for the external enclosure so that references to it will be dependable in the future.Right now it is I: one day, it could be G: the next day, and H: the day after that.Any ideas?

[Markymark2 0]

yeah I have the same thing ;() three physical hard drives, one DVD burner, one 19-1 card reader which adds 6 drives on!! and an external hard drive then also two virtual drives from magic iso and alcohol, then my phone when thats connected - it sees the flash drive as a hard drive and assigns it a letter.ALso I have two network shares mapped to my server.
So all in all i have the possiblity of 16 different drives!!
It also drives me insane trying to work out which drive my camera memory card is in and which drive letter my portable hard drive will have!
I think like me you know how to change a drive letter inside the Computer Managment console in the control panel but reserving a drive...hmm I have done a little research and it really doesnt seem to be possible ;()
Heres what Microsoft say about the problem.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/282530
Ive read a few forums on the topic also and apart from changing the drive letter you cannot seem to "reserve" a drive letter for use by a certain device.
Anyone know a registry hack? cos thats the only way to solve it i feel.

[xboxrulz1405241485 0]

Ya, I too don't think it's possible in the first place.xboxrulz

[jimmy89 0]

I know its not a solution, but the drive letters depend on which order the drives are connected. So, the first drive to connect would be your physical drives inside the computer (C: and D: etc etc), then physical cd/dvd drives, then anything you plug in after that. I have an external drive, in internal drive and DVDRW. It maps them E: C: and D:, then my daemon tools drive F: If i was to plug in my usb, it would become G: and if i plug my phone in, as mark said, it takes another drive, it would become H:A drive and B drive are reserved for floppy drives.If the drives are always connected to your computer, you should be able to assign them letters through the management console (as mark said) and they will always stay the same. I noticed once that when i plugged in my usb drive, it would take a drive letter that wasn't in order (so it would take G: insted of F: because it had been hooked up as G: before that) I'm not sure what was happening, but it kept the same drive letter always.

[ethergeek 0]

I've never had a problem with this. Just go into the disk management mmc snap-in and manually assign drive letters to logical disks. I set my ipod up as drive I: and windows xp seems to reserve this letter for my ipod; I've never seen anything mount on drive I: besides my ipod.

[wwheeler 0]

It is as simple as this (As long as it is Windows XP): 1.) Click on the Windows Start Button. 2.) Click on Control Panel 3.) Click on Performance and maintinance 4.) Click on Administrative Tools 5.) Double Click on Click on Computer Managment 6.) Click on Disk Managment 7.) At the Bottom of that screen, right click on the drive that you want to assign a letter to, and select Change Drive Letter and Paths.. 8.) Click on the Drive that you are assigning in the pop up dialog. 9.) Click Change10.) In The drop down box that is shown, select the letter that you would like assigned, then Finaly, 11.) Click on okay.You have just reassigned the drive letter for that drive..I am a pro DJ, and have my computer that I use in show set up with ten USB external HD's that are all assigned this way, so that when I start the machine up, they are still the same drive letters....-William

[iGuest 3]

Reserving A Drive Letter For An External EnclosureReserving A Drive Letter For An External Enclosure

Many thanks to William Wheeler for your complete answer. Not only do I now have myExternal hard disk assigned to E: and myKey to K:, but thanks to you I now know about a whole feature of Windows of which I was totally ignorant!

Hope you get to read this.

All the best,

Steve

[iGuest 3]

Reserving a Drive Letter for an external enclosureReserving A Drive Letter For An External Enclosure

I found your website via Google in what appears to be a continuing effort to resolve this issue--that is,  Reserving a Drive Letter for an external enclosure.

The solution suggested by wwheeler and acclaimed by Steve in the post that follows simply does not work.

I understand it and tried it several times. But each time, after assigning a letter to the drives, after shutting the computer off and starting it, the computer did what it usually does--assigns letters to the drives in sequence, so that what I wanted to be the and and O drives come up as J and K or L and M, depending on which drives I turn on first or second, etc.

An annoying situation--any solid solution to this?

Thank you.

George Kaywood

-feedback by George Kaywood

[iGuest 3]

Logical Disk Managment Service does not recognize mapped network drivesReserving A Drive Letter For An External Enclosure

A faster way to access the Logical Disk Managment Service is to right click on My Computer, choose Manage and select Disk Managment.

It is a pain to need to do this every time I work on a new computer.

I am a computer tech who uses flash drives for drivers, flash updates etc.  On a new computer it almost always assigns F as the next avalible drive.  Before I can get to work I need to assign the flash drive a H: so it will not conflict with the customer's mapped F: network drive.

Why does the Logical Disk Management Service not recognize mapped network drives?

Biff

-reply by Biff

[iGuest 3]

Found "USBDLM" software that helps map USB drives to particular drive letters.Reserving A Drive Letter For An External EnclosureFacing the same predicament regarding drive letters as others did in the forum, I found a program that can associate the hardware ID of a USB storage device to a particular drive letter.  Thus, even when I plug in various other peripherals into my laptop, or *gasp* plug my external hard drive into a different USB port, this software always associates my external Storage drive with the letter S.

 

The software is called USBDLM, and is available for free for private use on http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html

 

Configuration is accomplished manually via .INI files, though it could be manually set up to use the Registry.  The downloaded archive includes a utility to help determine the various USB hardware IDs associated with USB devices.

 

After reading the help file and modifying the sample .INI file, I rebooted the laptop to get the newly-installed service running.  The software worked as presented on the website, and in my opinion is worth it for someone technically-savvy who is frustrated with drive letters remapping themselves despite being set in Logical Volume Management, especially after hardware changes or new laptop docking configurations.

 

-reply by Michael

[iGuest 3]

Worked for me, Thanks!Reserving A Drive Letter For An External Enclosure

Replying to wwheelerI have Windows Vista Basic and followed William's steps. I reassigned my external USB hard-drive (that is only occasionally on) to the Z: drive. I tested the reassignment by detaching and re-attaching while the computer was still on, and then doing the same after a restart. Both times the drive kept its Z: designation. Thanks a ton for the help!NOTE:I manually named my external hard-drive, changing it from the manufacturer's default to a unique name. For those who are still having problems with successfully reassigning drive letters, try naming the device too as it could be a crucial variable (maybe?).

-reply by WSpelker

[iGuest 3]

Remapping the D: DVD drive and making it stickReserving A Drive Letter For An External Enclosure

The manual solution is the same using computer management/diskmanagement and then reassigning the D: DVD drive to another letter, lets say X:. This works fine for the current session on this computer running XP.My problem is that when I reboot, the DVD drive resets its letter designation to D:Any ideas on how I can get it to stick as X: or how I can remap the D: DVD drive using a batch file?

-question by Stan Simpson

[iGuest 3]

USB drive letter management/assignment for removable USB devicesReserving A Drive Letter For An External Enclosure

Replying to (G)MichaelI can suggest a solution that works to reserve a drive letter for a particular USB device, and it's FREE. It is called USB Drive Letter Management aka USBDLM.It is free, it is super small, runs as a Windows service, doesn't trample prevents network drive mappings from trampling on USB drive letter assignments and vice versa, and it works on MS Windows up through Windows 7 (32 bit only). The reason I first needed this utility was in fact because network drive letter mappings were taking drive letters that had been previously assigned by Windows to USB devices, either flash drives or Flip video cameras. This utility solved that problem for me.But now I need a solution to reserve a drive letter for a particular removable USB hard drive. And I see that USBDLM can accomplish this also. It is simply a matter of configuring the .INI file for USBDLM to assign a particular drive letter to a device based on volume name, and to reserve this drive letter for that device.Try it. It works great for me. No affiliation with this utility, just an end user. This thing is fabulous.Here's a link:http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

-reply by Tom McMillion

[iGuest 3]

Reserving A Drive Letter For An External EnclosureReserving A Drive Letter For An External Enclosure

Use USBDeview from Nirsoft.Net and delete/uninstall all USB devices using the required letter. Then connect the drive for which drive letter to be assigned.

-reply by Rithwik

[manuleka 0]

i never realize that in Windows a particular USB device can be assigned a drive letter... so what happens if one assigns all the drive letters to certain number of devices?does Windows reserve a few letters out?interesting stuff....