External disk problems

Good Morning,
I'm having a problem with my external hard drive. It's a Vantec NexStar MX Blk Dual 3.5" SATA HD with a Seagate 1.5TB Serial ATA HD 7200/32MB/SATA-3G. The drive is partition into 2 - S 341 GB and T 1.03 TB. They are NTFS and under System info described as "Local Fixed Disk". There is no caching (sp?) on either.
One problem is that when I reboot the system, their drive letters keep changing. The second probem is neither drive ever remembers the autoplay instructions I given them - mixed content, do nothing. The third problem is that my desktop games keep losing their icons and they all get the little "window" icon - even when I reletter the drive they don't change. The fourth problem is that the S drive will change to a little "window" icon at anytime.
What a mess, huh? Hoping you wizards can help!
Thank You!

 

Drive letter: open Control Panel, Admin Tools, Computer Management.
In the left pane select Disk Management. You should be able to give the external hard drive permanent drive letters from there.
I haven't tested in XP but in 2K, my Western Digital external has the same drive letter - please note, I keep the USB plug in the same port. I'm not sure how it reacts if I would keep unplugging and replugging the USB cable.

 

Wow, you get around... software, hardware....
I've been in Disk Management and assigned the Drive letters that I want and set up the autoplay how I want it, apply and save, but, the system keeps changing both items! Sounds like something out of Twilight Zone...

 

If it's one thing I've learned, it's that computers do what they want when they want to! :-D
Keep fighting with it and maybe one day you will gain the upper hand. Sorry I don't know of another way to do it. There might be a way to do it through the registry but I wouldn't know where to start looking.

I think a windows update corrected something so that autoplay will not work. The reason is, too many people were getting malware when they plugged in an infected USB stick so it has been turned off. Don't waste your time trying to fight that issue. You'll be grateful autoplay is off if you ever get a USB stick with malware on it.