It's really inconvenient when attaching and detaching external hard drives, particularly with Lightroom or Picasa as the Library function no longer recognizes the files if the Drive letter changes. So I set about finding out how to fix a Drive to a Letter so every time it's connected, it takes the same Letter. Here's how...
Open an explorer window, and right-click "My Computer", then select "Manage".
On the left side, under "Storage" click on "Disk Management".
In the top right, right-click the USB drive, then select "Change Drive Letter and Paths"
In the dialog box, select "Change" then select your drive letter of choice and press OK.
You'll get a warning message, press "Yes" . Close the Disk Management dialog and you're done.
Good points....
The drive does need to be attached.
You assign a letter to the drive, not the port/hub. For example, I had a card reader that took E: F: G: H: when I connected it. My external hard drive would take F: without the card reader, and I: with the card reader which then conflicted with my iPod, which went to I: when I connected it.
So now, I've just assigned the external hard drive to R: which it seems to recognise by the name given to the drive.
Warning message says: "Changing the drive letter may cause programs to no longer run. Are you sure?" If you are running programs from that drive then maybe there could be an issue. If you are just using it as external storage, there shouldn't be an issue.
Also note that it is a good idea that if you staticly label your USB devices to start with G: or greater.
Some external Hard disks/CD/DVD drives like to assign themselves to D: E: F: no questions asked and if you have a Statc E: USB device you may not see one or the other.
I always wonder why Mac users don't throw the damn things in a trash compactor and make Apple-sauce.
The little differences are what drives me insane when I use those things, and I don't know where anything is in the OS. I feel like I did about 10 years ago when I started using windows.
OHMYGAWD!!!!! What a hoot! I was so exasperated when I accidently disconnected my new external HD and it swapped places with my camera!
I'll have to look at this and figure it out for myself later 'cause I was sooooooo used to my camera being Drive F. Now it's E! And my HD is now G......Alphabet soup! LOL!!!
Generally speaking, I don't touch my external drives with any software. Any photos I'm working on get transferred onto the computer's HD. The externals are backup only.
