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?

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.
http://support.microsoft.com/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.

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

xboxrulz

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.

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.

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 Change
10.) 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

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

Many thanks to William Wheeler for your complete answer. Not only do I now have my External hard disk assigned to E: and my Key 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

Reserving a Drive Letter for an external enclosure
Reserving 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

Logical Disk Managment Service does not recognize mapped network drives
Reserving 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