Drive letters on removable drives

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jonathan Finney
  • Start date Start date
J

Jonathan Finney

I generally keep letters A-H for local drives, but if I connect my portable
USB drive/card reader, Windows assigns drive letters staring with the first
available. Is it possible to 'reserve' unused drive letters so that when I
connect the USB drives, letters are assigned starting from, say, J?

I can see that drives can be checked an unchecked in two sections of
TweakUI, but I assume this just relates to what is displayed in Explorer.

Any ideas on how I can achieve this?
 
This should suit you...


Courtesy of Uwe Sieber:
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html

When a removable drive (USB flash drive, flash card reader, portable hard
drive) is attached for the first time, Windows mounts it to the first
available drive letter. If there is a network share on this letter, Windows
will use it anyway for the new USB drive because network shares are specific
to the current user and not visible in the context of the system where the
letter is assigned. The USB drive then appears to be invisible.
You can change the letter assignments in the Windows Disk Management Console
with a lot of mouse clicks but you have to do it again for every new device.
And, for USB devices that have no serial number (in violation of the USB
standards) you have to do it too when you attach it to a different USB port.
The worst case are two identical USB devices that have identical serial
numbers which is definitely a violation of the USB standards. It's
impossible to use them at the same time.

USBDLM can for newly attached USB drives
check if the letter is used by a network share of the currently logged on
user and assign the next letter that is 'really' available
assign a letter from a list of new default letters
assign letters for a specific USB drive by putting an INI file on the drive
assign letters for specific USB port
assign a folder on an NTFS drive to mount the slots of multi-slot card
readers to
All functions are applied to USB drives only at the moment they are being
attached.

USBDLM runs as Win32 service under Windows XP and higher. It works under
Windows 2000 too but there are often problems determining the USB port
names.








--
Tumppi
=================================
Most learned on these newsgroups
Helsinki, FINLAND
(translations from/to FI not always accurate
=================================
 
Thanks Thomas.

This appears to be what I'm looking for so I've downloaded it and bought a
license. Haven't had a chance to try it out yet.

--
Jonathan Finney

Thomas Wendell said:
This should suit you...


Courtesy of Uwe Sieber:
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html

When a removable drive (USB flash drive, flash card reader, portable hard
drive) is attached for the first time, Windows mounts it to the first
available drive letter. If there is a network share on this letter,
Windows will use it anyway for the new USB drive because network shares
are specific to the current user and not visible in the context of the
system where the letter is assigned. The USB drive then appears to be
invisible.
You can change the letter assignments in the Windows Disk Management
Console with a lot of mouse clicks but you have to do it again for every
new device.
And, for USB devices that have no serial number (in violation of the USB
standards) you have to do it too when you attach it to a different USB
port. The worst case are two identical USB devices that have identical
serial numbers which is definitely a violation of the USB standards. It's
impossible to use them at the same time.

USBDLM can for newly attached USB drives
check if the letter is used by a network share of the currently logged on
user and assign the next letter that is 'really' available
assign a letter from a list of new default letters
assign letters for a specific USB drive by putting an INI file on the
drive
assign letters for specific USB port
assign a folder on an NTFS drive to mount the slots of multi-slot card
readers to
All functions are applied to USB drives only at the moment they are being
attached.

USBDLM runs as Win32 service under Windows XP and higher. It works under
Windows 2000 too but there are often problems determining the USB port
names.








--
Tumppi
=================================
Most learned on these newsgroups
Helsinki, FINLAND
(translations from/to FI not always accurate
=================================
Click to expand...
 
You're welcome..


--
Tumppi
=================================
Most learned on these newsgroups
Helsinki, FINLAND
(translations from/to FI not always accurate
=================================




Jonathan Finney said:
Thanks Thomas.

This appears to be what I'm looking for so I've downloaded it and bought a
license. Haven't had a chance to try it out yet.
Click to expand...
 
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