Adding the 27th peripheral?

[NWgeek]

I am not sure if this question has been answered earlier or not so I apologize if it has.

I have gotten to where I cannot get along without my [USB] flash drive. On networks at work and home almost the whole alphabet is used up [A~Z] What happens when a user plugs in the 27th device??

USB tchnology touts "127 devices" but what drive letters are assigned to these devices?

TYIA

 

[SESaskDFC]

Howdy:

Most peripheral's are NOT hard-drives or cd-rom etc that require a drive letter assigned to them.. They are printers, scanners, mouse, keyboards, etc that don't require drive letters !!

Murray

 

[NWgeek]

Murray,

That makes sense. Perhaps my question should have read "Are you limited to twenty-two mapped drives?" where A:, B:, C: and D: [CD-ROM] are typically spoken for. Granted, having one's explorer window fully populated from E:~Z: is crowded, but the question remains: "Is this it as far as mapped drives go?"

TYIA

 

[Blujacket]

This is from Help and Support in WinXP and a search on "Drive Letters":
"A computer can use up to 26 drive letters. Drive letters A and B are reserved for floppy disk drives, but you can assign these letters to removable drives if the computer does not have a floppy disk drive. Hard disk drives in the computer receive letters C through Z, while mapped network drives are assigned drive letters in reverse order (Z through B)."

The implication is that is the limit but I have heard mention of more letters such as AA but can't find a reference yet.

 

[bcastner]

No AA, but:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=307889

 

[NWgeek]

Thank you all for the comments. I suspect that this issue [exceeding mapped drive limits] is something that every network administrator has to wrestle with. I would be curious to hear what their solutions are....

 

[bcastner]

On a network you do not have to specify a mapped letter; you can always use the UNC path \\computername\sharename in any reference.