I have XP Pro. I have a USB external drive that I only turn on to Archive a FDISR image to and to update that image. I assigned it drive G. This has worked fine until I hook up a digital picture frame,that shows up as F. For some reason it takes the G assignment away from my Archive drive. The next time I try to update my Archive I have to go into Disk Management and make it G again. Is there some way to stop the re-assignment of the drive letters?
Try another USB drive, like a flash drive and see if it pulls your G drive letter like the digital frame does. I can't replicate your problem here, using an external USB drive and flash drive. ---- rich
WilliamP, perhaps USB Drive Letter Manager might help. Caveat: I have not used USBDLM but have seen it mentioned before. Let us know if it does the trick for you.
No personal experience here but I recall reading that if you assign the drive a higher (in the alphabet) letter it will not be replaced by another drive. So, if you use the letter W (for example) its far enough out of the rotation that it will stay that way. Another thing you can do is simply leave the drive plugged into a USB port. It does not have to be turned on (I am assuming it has its own power supply here) and as long as its plugged in it will keep its designation. Of course if the drive is powered through the USB port this will not work as in this case the drive will be "on" all the time.
Have a look at the first part of this thread that suggests assigning a "sticky" to your usb devices. http://aumha.net/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=28888 It also mentions the method that JRVeijo mentions as well as a couple others. I have also never tried any of the methods because I haven't had the need so far.
USB Safely Remove seems like it might do what you need (assigning drive letters is addressed in their online manual). ** plus it works with SATA drives too** http://safelyremove.com/index.html And, it's on 40% off promotion via Bits du Jour on March 5/09
