Dynamically changing drive letters is a PITA

KublaiKhan · Aug 8, 2015

I thought I wouldn't have to bother with this, after having finished what I hope is my last Windows XP installation ever, but...

I just got screwed when XP renamed a flash drive as E:, when one of the the programs I was using pointed at the USB hard drive E:

I ended up writing a bunch of data to the wrong place and deleted it before realizing what had happened.

Thing is, I have no idea why XP just decided to use E: for this flash drive. I hadn't disconnected the USB hard drive. No, I plugged in a thumb drive last night and XP arbitrarily swapped drive letters around.

I've manually changed lettering for the USB and optical drives using Disk Management. Is that enough, or will this keep happening?

hang-the-9 · Aug 13, 2015

It may happen again, it all depends on when it detects the drives. Not much you can do with removable media to force it to use the same drive letter each time. Just make sure you have the one you want lower plugged in first and check what letter it gets.

KublaiKhan · Aug 14, 2015

Oh, I know letter assignment can change when devices are disconnected, but this USB hard drive was NOT disconnected. XP just decided to change it from E: to H: or something, without my input. A little thumb drive I connected the night before became E:, and I didn't catch it, until it was too late. Not the end of the world, but I don't want it to keep happening.

KublaiKhan · Sep 2, 2015

OMG. It keeps happening.

Every time I connect a thumb drive to the computer, my USB hard drives are being assigned new letters. When I fix one, the other changes.

Is there any way to stop this?

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Dynamically changing drive letters is a PITA

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