Hi, pbl.
All I can say is the Old Faithful: It works for me.
In Disk Management, are you assigning letters to the devices? Or to the
partition(s) on those devices? Are you right-clicking on the Volume in the
Volume List (at the top of the screen by default) or on the left column in
the Graphical View (Disk 0, for example)? Are you assigning names to your
volumes, or relying only on "drive" letters?
In my system, Disks 0, 1 and 2 are Hard Disk Drives (divided into more than
a dozen volumes). Disk 3 Removable is my ReadyBoost USB drive,
(semi-)permanently assigned R:. Even if I remove the USB key and insert it
into a different USB port, it keeps the letter R:. Disk 4 Removable is my
SanDisk single-slot SD card reader and it is always Drive S:. Just now it
was empty (No Media), but was still identified as S:; I inserted an SD card
and Windows recognized it and offered to read the files on S:. I unplugged
the USB cable from its port on the back of the computer; Disk 4 disappeared
from Disk Management. I plugged the cable into a 4-port hub; Disk 4
appeared again and, as soon as I clicked on it, the letter S: appeared
again. (Then I restored the plug to the back of the case; situation normal
again.)
I always label each of my volumes and devices; the labels (names) get
written to the HD or USB device and remain constant no matter whether I'm
running WinXP, Vista or Win7. They don't shift like drive letters when I
reboot to a different OS. Even back in MS-DOS days, we used "vol" to write
volume names onto the disks; in Disk Management, right-click on the volume,
then Properties, then type a name into the unlabeled box near the top of the
window.
But I've never used USB external hard drives - except for the flash drives.
Maybe they behave differently.
RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
rc@xxxxxx
Microsoft Windows MVP
Windows Live Mail 2009 (14.0.8064.0206) in Win7 Ultimate x64 7000
"pbl" <pblnews@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:01f67152$0$25479$c3e8da3@xxxxxx
Quote:
> I have 5 USB devices (2 external drives, 1 flash drive, one CF card
> reader, and 1 Sony walkman) that when connected score a drive letter. My
> problem is that the drive letters change depending on the order in which
> the devices are connected (the first one plugged in gets drive F, then G,
> etc). This causes a headache for my backup software SyncBackPro, where I
> have schemes set up for my two external hard drives based on drive
> letters. I can change the drive letters in Disk Management (Vista
> Ultimate) but that only sticks while that device is connected. For
> instance, if I unplug my primary backup drive G and connect my flash
> drive, the flash drive would then become G. Is there any way of
> permanently locking a particular device to a particular drive letter?