Default Drive Letter For USB

Hola fellow geekazoids,

Just wondering if anyone knew of a way of changing the default drive letter that a USB device will occupy. For example, at work, we have digital cameras. When you plug them into a computer, they will automatically try to use E: or F: (depending on how many optical drives you have). Problem is, we have network drives mapped to these letters, and we have to disconnect to use the camera. If I could set windows to default the USB drive to say, Q:, that would be hellishly cool. Thanks for anyone who can answer!

Milty

 

>>Hola fellow geekazoids. Just wondering if anyone knew of a way of changing the default drive letter that a USB device will occupy.<< Mada_Milty

<dutifully places palm on shirt-pocket penholder and gives Sgt. Milty the 'fellow geekazoid' salute - lol>​

Unfortunately, I don't think you can assign [or reassign] all USB drives to a particular drive letter, automatically from the Windows GUI. Because it's drive and media in one, each time you plug in a USB drive for the first time the Windows plug'n-play starts up a assigns the first free drive letter. When the USB has no USB serial then this happens again if it's attached to a different USB port.

However you might try using an external tool like the the Novell, Inc tool called the USB Drive Letter Tool or possibly the freeware utility USB Drive Letter Manager USBDLM v2.2.2

Good Luck!

 

This might be another option for you Mada, http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1676&page=9

Steve

 

Thanks, Steve, but sadly, the camera cannot be formatted with NTFS.

Heh, you sound an awful lot like my google search results I was actually trying to avoid this route, but maybe that will be the only way to go.


Thanks again, amigos!

 

Yup. I don't know why but I kept thinking USB flash drive.

Steve

 

I assigned my USB drive via disk management and it always seems to go back to X: - even tho. there are other open letters... maybe just a fluke...

 

Hmmm, yes. I have tried re-assigning the drive letter via disk management, but having the change stick seems to be hit or miss. Guess I'll have to either use a third party app, or suck it up until Microsoft does something about it.

Cheers for all your efforts though, gentlemen!

 

I had the same problem with the following drives on my windows xp

C=HDD
D=CDROM
E=HDD
F=CDROM (Daemon Tools)
G= Network Drive
H=Network Drive

On the above, all my USB devices defaulted to G drive and I had to keep reassigning to something like J to be able to access them and they would not keep this allocation on next connect.

I changed My F drive to something else and hence had a gap now between my hardware devices and my network drives. My USB devices now default to F drive. ie.

C=HDD
D=CDROM
E=HDD
F= Not used
G= Network Drive
H=Network Drive
J=CDROM (Daemon Tools)

Conclusion: You need a Gap after your last local device and your mapped devices and USB devices should then default to this.

Hope this helps

Adam Annen

 

LOL

Thanks, but I abandoned this thread two years ago!