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Controlling the Drive Letter (DL) associated with USB connected Disk devices

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robroy6

Technical User
Aug 20, 2006
60
US
PC: Dell 4600i, XP pro SP3, six USB connected disks.
When I boot up I examine the DL associated with my disks. There is usually one disk which needs to have it's DL changed because some of my shortcuts/programs require a specific DL to run. Usually F: must be changed to G:. Sometimes another disk has the wrong letter assigned by the Disk Manager Service (DMS). e.g M: must be changed to E:.
I can do this, but it's a hassle.
Is there a way to have the DMS always assign a specific DL to a specific drive on reboot?
In addition, if I move a drive to a different USB port the letters get changed on reboot by the DMS.
 
I found USBDLM which is supposed to control all features of USB drives. In reading their documentation I get very confused. It's an elaborate and complicated program with hundreds of options.
Does anyone have experience with using USBDLM sucessfully?
Thanks
 
Usually, if you INITIALLY set removable USB devices when they are installed (memory sticks, external hard drives) as a higher drive letter (S,T,U,V,X) they will not interfere later with more common drive letters A-G which are more often used for local drive mappings.
 
Thanks. But I have the problem of some shortcuts/programs/dlls calling a specific drive letter and when windows assigns a different letter to that drive, my calling shortcut/program doesn't run.
I try to keep C: with about 50% free space so I have the habit of downloading free or purchased s/w and moving it from my C: drive to an external drive with lots of room before I actuate the s/w. This results in s/w looking for drive E: (for example) to do some work. I have literally hundreds of such programs, some years old. I do not want windows changing the drive letters for my external drives!!

I did reread the USBDLM documentation and think I have a solution. If it works and you are interested I will reply with the result.
 
I am using USBDLM with success to control the drive letters of my HDDs. I am running 12 HDDs for 14 partitions and only needed to assign drive letters for 3 or 4 of them.

 
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