freylicher
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Setting default drive letter to be assigned to USB storage device
Whenever I connect a USB storage device, e.g. a digital camera, to my XP machine it assigns to it the next available drive letter, which is F in my case. The problem is that this drive letter is already assigned to one of my network drives. So I have to go to Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Computer Management-Disk Management and change the drive-letter. Everything is fine until I disconnect the device, connect it, get the F drive letter and have to go through the whole reassigning process again.
Is there a way to tell XP that every time I connect a USB storage device I want it to assign specific letter instead of the next available.
Thank you for your help,
alex
Is there a way to tell XP that every time I connect a USB storage device I want it to assign specific letter instead of the next available.
Thank you for your help,
alex
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Hi Alex...
yes, as far as I know there is no way to tell windows to assign usb devices only drive letters from a specific range.
You said you're using FAT32 partitions. Have you tried to assign all your usb storage devices different (!) drive letters? With that it works here.
Another possibility:
You don't have to convert every partition to NTFS to map the device to a folder. If you have some space left on your harddisk, you can create a new NTFS-partition there and only use this special partition to map your usb storage devices there to folders (the usb devices don't have to be formatted with NTFS!).
yes, as far as I know there is no way to tell windows to assign usb devices only drive letters from a specific range.
You said you're using FAT32 partitions. Have you tried to assign all your usb storage devices different (!) drive letters? With that it works here.
Another possibility:
You don't have to convert every partition to NTFS to map the device to a folder. If you have some space left on your harddisk, you can create a new NTFS-partition there and only use this special partition to map your usb storage devices there to folders (the usb devices don't have to be formatted with NTFS!).
Exactly JBlond! You only need 2MB of space (if that) to create a tiny NTFS partition to mount the lettered drive. If you notice on the how-to I provided, the drive will be accessible by either the DRIVE LETTER or the mounted folder name. What you've done by mounting it to an NTFS folder is essentially reserving the drive letter just as you would like to do.
If you like, you can actually make the mounted folder hidden and still only use the drive letter.
Jeff
TechSoEasy
If you like, you can actually make the mounted folder hidden and still only use the drive letter.
Jeff
TechSoEasy
ASKER
I got it. Thank you very much for help,
alex
alex
I know that this post is very old. I am posting the following solutions here for the benefit of those people who come across this question and would like some other answers.
The following answers have been posted on Experts-Exchange:
1) The simplest answer is to assign the CDROMs in the system to letters besides D: and E:. This will free up those two letters to be assigned by Windows to External Devices (assuming you don't have multiple disk partitions, etc.)
2) There is an inexpensive utility (free for students) named "USB Drive Letter Manager" which can take care of drive letter mapping automatically.
The following answers have been posted on Experts-Exchange:
1) The simplest answer is to assign the CDROMs in the system to letters besides D: and E:. This will free up those two letters to be assigned by Windows to External Devices (assuming you don't have multiple disk partitions, etc.)
2) There is an inexpensive utility (free for students) named "USB Drive Letter Manager" which can take care of drive letter mapping automatically.
ASKER
Thank you very much for your help. If I understood you correctly, there is no way to tell Win XP to use a specific range of drive letters, say X through Z, when it assigns new drive letter to a USB storage device. Instead you recommended to mount the drive to a shared folder, but that will require converting my FAT32 partitions to NTFS, which I do not want to do. Is there a way to keep my FAT32 and use this feature?
Thanks again,
alex