Windows tries to focus our attention on the documents we work with while letting us pay scant attention to such niceties as the folder or drive where those documents are located. The introduction of libraries in Windows 7 has been the latest evolution of this trend. Given this approach, most of us don’t think a lot about drive letters, yet sometimes those letters really do matter. That’s especially the case if you use external drives for backing up your data or for storing multimedia files. If you have several external drives attached to your system, you’ll expect to find your photos stored on, say, E:, your music on F: and your general backups on G:.
That’s all very well if you keep those drives plugged in and you don’t add or remove other storage devices. However, if you unplug one of your USB drives, connect another device such as a media card reader, and then reconnect your USB drive, you’ll find its drive letter has changed. It may be merely disconcerting to you, but it could thoroughly confuse your backup or media-sharing software. It can also cause problems on networks when Windows assigns what it thinks is an available letter to a network share.
The problem is that drive letter assignments are largely fluid. Windows reserves C: for the first internal drive on your system. (A: and B: used to be reserved for floppy drives, but with most PCs now floppy-less, those letters are available for use by other drives.) If you have other internal hard drives, they’ll be next in line for drive letters after C:, followed by optical drives, SCSI drives, FireWire and USB drives. When you plug in a USB hard drive, Windows assigns it the next available drive letter.
Assigning letters
If you’d prefer to have your drive letters stay put, you can manually assign letters to specific drives. For example, you might assign M: to the drive on which you store your music, P: to your photo drive and B: to your general backup drive. When you’re making these assignments, it’s best to use letters from the latter part of the alphabet because those letters are less likely to get swiped by Windows for its own purposes.
Before you assign a letter, you should first ensure that Windows is set to display drive letters. It’s also a good idea to give your drives descriptive volume labels. This helps you identify at a glance what’s stored on a drive. To display drive letters:
- Click Start, type
folder optionsin the search box and press Enter. - In the ‘Folder Options’ dialog box click the View tab. In the ‘Advanced Settings’ box, make sure ‘Show drive letters’ is ticked and click OK. To change the volume label of a drive: Click Start —> Computer.
- Right-click the drive you want to label and select Rename.
- Type the new name and press Enter. It’s useful to have the volume label reflect the content stored on the drive. For example, you might label your C: drive
Systemand your music backup driveMusic.
To assign a new drive letter, make sure the drive is connected to your system and then follow these steps.
- Click Start, type
diskmgmt.mscin the search box, press Enter and respond Yes to the User Account Control prompt. The Disk Management snap-in will then open. - Right-click the drive whose letter you want to change and select ‘Change drive letter and paths’.
- Click the Change button and choose an available letter from the drop-down list. Click OK and respond Yes to the warning prompt.
Once you’ve done this, you’ll be able to disconnect the drive and reconnect it using any available USB port, and Windows will give it the drive letter you’ve chosen.
Selecting drive letters
While it’s theoretically possible to assign the letters A: and B: to your external drives, it’s probably best to avoid this if you have other letters available. That’s because some poorly written program on your computer just might think you have a floppy drive connected and cause havoc on your drive.
It’s also wise to avoid N: and Z:, as the former gets used on networks and the latter has some esoteric uses. The safest approach is to simply work backwards from Y: and let Windows use the earlier available letters.
Top tip: Zap card reader letters
Windows assigns letters to card readers and USB ports, even when you don’t have a card inserted or drive connected. With multi-slot card readers, this can quickly chew through the available letters. If you’d like to eliminate these ‘ghost’ drives, try USBDLM (http://tinyurl.com/usbdlm). Among its many functions, this utility has an option to prevent Windows from assigning letters unless needed. It’s a fairly techie program, so if you’re feeling geeky, read the instructions on the web site and give it a go.
