Drive letter changes

XP Pro, SP3, current updating, Lenovo T60p laptop at about 2 ghz

I use a flash drive and two USB hard drives somewhat regularly, but they are not always online - in fact need to be offline at times. What can I do to keep XP from switching my drive letters around? I set up a shortcut to some place then suddenly is has a different path and I'm getting access errors. It seems there are plenty of letters in the alphabet. Can they not be locked into what they connect to?

 

XP's Disk Management will fix this for you. With your removable plugged in right click My Computer > Manage > Disk Management. Right click the removable > Change Drive Letter and Paths > assign the unused drive letter you want, OK and exit. Do this for each removable, assigning a different letter to each. It's best to use letters at the end of the alphabet rather than up front.

This method will survive removal and reinsertion through a reboot even if you use a different USB port each time.

 

I really hope you are right. I could have sworn that at least one drive letter I set up that way was later changed by the system.

 

As far as I'm aware there isn't any other way of doing what you want, but we all know that Windows isn't 100% stable and that settings can change without obvious cause. Let us know though if this does fail in the near future.

 

I'd be happy to do that, but with my short memory _AND_ being furious with Windows screwups, I'd probably never remember to report.