Default drive letter for external devices?

johnnyg5646

I have a user here who is a secretary and is given different memory sticks all day long from the people she supports. The problem is, a lot of the brands of sticks have default drive letters like, "h" or "g", which are letters we happened to have mapped to network drives. I can go in and change the individual stick letter, but she gets so many in a given day, it would become a full time job in it's self.

Any ideas on how to set it up so external devices are automatically R: or something like that? The user is on XP. Thanks

NPA24

You can try to go in Computer Management > Disk Management and specifically change the drive letter for each external USB. It should remember it everytime you put that specific USB device. Let me know if that works.

johnnyg5646

thats what I did, the only problem is, every time there is a new stick involved I have to do that again. I really don't have the time to do that for her all day and she also seems to think this is "unexceptable." Any other ideas?

mrhaun03

What if you map the network drives with different letter?

Smallguy

they only way I can think of is ot change her network drives to start at Z and work back so that the e: f: g: etc are not already mapped.

other than that and the suggestion above I do ont tihkn there is any way to force USB drives to always be Drive "X"

I assume u've tried google

johnnyg5646

Unfortunetly the network guys won't let us change the drive mapping letters. Looks like she may be stuck. Oh well.

Thanks guys

Sie

Any good for you?

http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html

Plantwiz

The fact the network 'guys' won't change the network drive mapping is pretty lame (IMNSHO)....since users tend to have a variety of configurations of drives in their workstations (2 Atapi devices or multiple HDDs and today various portable drives) it's almost a poor practice to start with any network drive letters near the top of the letter chain....


However, since you won't change them if the above link doesn't help you and your problem is isolated to 1 user. I'm going to 'ass'ume that she's using a USB slot correct? If so, what if you install a multi-card reader (3.5" drive front) into her chassis and assign those ports letters. This way when she plugs into which ever card reader slot (some come with USB and Firewire as well 40-in-1 drives)...the drive will hold it's letter regardless of the card or stick inserted.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820176005

johnnyg5646

Not a bad idea at all. I might actually suggest that. Thanks for the advice

Plantwiz

johnnyg5646 wrote:

Not a bad idea at all. I might actually suggest that. Thanks for the advice

Cool. You're welcome!

I'm confident that will work, because I have one similar to that and regardless of the type of card I insert...the card ID changes....not the Drive letter....so I'm I believe it will work fairly inexpensively and keep 'everyone' happy

johnnyg5646

When I told them that suggestion as a resolution I was told to just escalate the ticket and let someone else handle it. Oh corprate america, will you never learn?

Thanks anyways