Assign Drive Letter?

gramps

gramps

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I have two external drives attached to my laptop (twin drive bay) though don't have them active all of the time, at least twice a week for backups ... they are assigned F & G. I also have an onboard SD card reader that it assigned as E, which I use to upload images for editing.

My backups are scheduled and mostly work fine but every now and then the backup fails and on checking I see that the external drive that was assigned as F has been re-assigned as E, so Macrium Reflect says it can't find the backup to append to.
I go into Administrative Tools and again change the drive letter from E back to F and all is well until the next random time it changes.
Is there any way to make a permanent change that it unaffected by the external drives or SD reader being active or not?

Dell XPS running Win 10.
 
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Have you tried assigning them to higher drive letters? Did you assign both to the same drive letter and then plug them both in at the same time at some point, or maybe a thumb drive or memory card? I would follow the advice and use a high drive letter away from the existing ones to leave room for auto assignment.
 
J Veitch said:
Have you tried assigning them to higher drive letters? Did you assign both to the same drive letter and then plug them both in at the same time at some point, or maybe a thumb drive or memory card? I would follow the advice and use a high drive letter away from the existing ones to leave room for auto assignment.
Click to expand...

The onboard reader always assigns itself as E whenever I put a card into it (otherwise it doesn't show), that's why I assigned F & G to the two external drives (i.e. higher than E) ... however sometimes the drive that I assigned as F will re-assign itself as E, so instead of having external drives F & G I get E & G.
Do you mean 'much' higher rather than merely higher?
 
I have this trouble sometimes with 2 HDDs designated 'E' and 'F'

i 'think' it is when i have turned on the printer first - then plug in an external HDD [say E] to a USB port

the printer takes the first available designation ie 'E' then the next is assigned to the HDD - so it fails

given up trying to sort it out........:(..... - now i always open 'My Computer' to quickly check the drive # is correct before doing the semi-weekly backups
 
I did mean much higher. If for some reason f or g was assigned to something else, like a USB thumb drive, it would get bumped. So try something a lot higher, you can use up to z.
 
Ok I'll give that a try, thanks :)
 
[QUOTE="Giblets, post: 7317042, member: 80407"...... assigned my two external HDD's to M: & N: No probs since.[/QUOTE]

without doing a 'format' - how do you change the drive letter of the external HDDs

is it still a DOS command..?
 
Yardbent said:
without doing a 'format' - how do you change the drive letter of the external HDDs

is it still a DOS command..?
Click to expand...

See the link in Post #2 for a visual explanation.
 
Yardbent said:
is it still a DOS command..?
Click to expand...
DOS has not been a feature in Windows since Windows 98 SE some 15 years ago. I doubt if the OP is using any OS that old. I hope not.
 
have you tried plugging in all external drives / USB drives at the same time and assigning the drive letters as per the link in post #2?
 
Makes no difference, switches randomly ... maybe setting them to X & Y will resolve it, time will tell :)
 
redsnappa said:
DOS has not been a feature in Windows since Windows 98 SE some 15 years ago. I doubt if the OP is using any OS that old. I hope not.
Click to expand...

??

i often use 'Command prompt [Admin] to run dnsflush - Windows 10....:)
 
clicker123 said:
have you tried plugging in all external drives / USB drives at the same time and assigning the drive letters as per the link in post #2?
Click to expand...

as i only have 1 fast USB port accessible on the front - and having 4 external HDD - i have assigned Drive letters P - S as per the link above

works well now - thanks
 
Even more stupidly, the kernel Network Derive driver and USB HDD driver don't talk so Windows will assign a drive letter already in use by SMB to a USB HDD.
 
Use Disk Management to set the drives and don't use under G:
leave them for the OS
 
When assigning static drive letters to USB devices I've worked backwards alphabetically for a few years as I had the same problem in the past. It resolved the issue.
 
st599 said:
Even more stupidly, the kernel Network Derive driver and USB HDD driver don't talk so Windows will assign a drive letter already in use by SMB to a USB HDD.
Click to expand...

You must be Greek!:rolleyes:
 
gramps said:
......the external drive that was assigned as F has been re-assigned as E, so Macrium Reflect says it can't find the backup to append to.
I go into Administrative Tools and again change the drive letter from E back to F and all is well until the next random time it changes.
Is there any way to make a permanent change that it unaffected by the external drives or SD reader being active or not?
Click to expand...

I have exactly the same thing. I wonder if this would do the trick - http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html

More here - http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_help_e.html#by_criteria
 
Well after setting the two external USB drives as X&Y the flipping machine has reassigned them as F&G today so the backup failed! :help:
 
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