Solved Drive Letters - inadequate and outdated?

[Ketsuban]

Motherhood?

 

[fdegrove]

Hi,

There is network storage and cloud storage too.

Surely you do not need to map every single share on your network simultaneously?
You could just reach the shares through it's UNC location on the net just as easily....

And you really do not have to stick to drive letters locally either except for the C: drive (O.K. you still can if you must but it's risky) or programmes that are not on the C: drive that require a drive letter to work.

Provided your c:\ drive (or at least one partition on your system) is NTFS formatted any other partition or non-removable disk can be accessed through a mount point as explained higher up in this thread.

Surely you're going to need a lot of hardware to run out of driveletters now...

Anyhow, I happen to like driveletters as I don't like to type long or cryptic names I can't remember anyways....

That said, there may be a way to get rid of driveletters for removable media as well, I don't know...

Cheers,

P.S. It would be nice though if Windows wouldn't (automatically) assign a drive letter to mounted images or VHDs.

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there
I don't know anyone whose actually run out of 26 Letters (English alphabet) for Disk drives yet.

You can always mount network drives anyway you want -- and then just set the Mount network drive option to be available at next boot

So if you want your drive can be mounted as \\really\idiotic\drive if you want.

I can't see the normal user wanting to go through the Linux type of rigmarole in mounting directories etc -- yes of course its more flexible but there's IMO nothing wrong with having a simple letter as aMount point.

Shared network directories and libraries can give you alternate choices too.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[Ketsuban]

I don't know anyone whose actually run out of 26 Letters (English alphabet) for Disk drives yet.

I don't care, because that's not the justification for what's being proposed. (This seems to be the only relevant bit of your post - most users don't use network shares and can't be bothered to work out how to manually mount a partition to a directory, so helpful advice on how to is completely worthless - the people whose experience using a PC would be improved by using drive names rather than letters are not reading this thread.)

 

[SIW2]

We know there is a lack of consistency.

Most people here are multibooting.

Personally, I build pe media - I am well aware of your point.

One assumes that MS figures simple letters are easy for the average Punter. More advanced users can look after themselves just fine.

If I can be bothered I set up my installations so the letters are consistent whichever os I am booted into.

Sometimes I don't bother - I don't have any trouble either way.

Changing it now would be a massive undertaking.

 

[lehnerus2000]

Meh!

The only real benefit (of names over letters) is you can swap partitions around at random, without having to adjust shortcuts and program preference settings.
I seriously doubt that most people do that.

Doesn't GPT support named partitions?

One assumes that MS figures simple letters are easy for the average Punter. More advanced users can look after themselves just fine.

I wouldn't be surprised to find out, that most people don't even know what drive letters are.

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there
the sort of person who finds this stuff (Drive letters) silly has EASILY enough knowledge to use another method of accessing his disks if required.

Since most people now who AREN'T specialists probably use LAPTOPS rather than desk tops the situation hardly arises since they will probably have ONE internal HDD possibly divided into TWO partitions and also own a USB stick or two and a USB HDD which they use fairly infrequently so naming really isn't an issue.

cheers
jimbo

 

[fafhrd]

Hi there
I don't know anyone whose actually run out of 26 Letters (English alphabet) for Disk drives yet.

You can always mount network drives anyway you want -- and then just set the Mount network drive option to be available at next boot

So if you want your drive can be mounted as \\really\idiotic\drive if you want.

I can't see the normal user wanting to go through the Linux type of rigmarole in mounting directories etc -- yes of course its more flexible but there's IMO nothing wrong with having a simple letter as aMount point.

Shared network directories and libraries can give you alternate choices too.

Cheers
jimbo

Hi, Jimbo, it's not "someone" running out of drive letters, it's Windows running out of drive letters!

First, an analogy: I can open my documents folder, search all my documents for word files containing the words "Solicitor" and "Bank" and when the search has finished, I can select all the documents found, select them all, and open the lot in word by right clicking them and choosing open.

I think you would consider that fair use.

Now for my point:

Yesterday I tried an experiment, and searched my external drive for *.iso files. In the search window, there were 36 iso files there, all downloaded images of CDs or DVDs.

I can select one of the ISO images and open it, and Windows creates a new Virtual CD-ROM with that image loaded.

I can select 6 of the ISOs and Windows 8 creates 6 new Virtual CD-ROMs with those loaded images.

I select all of those 36 ISO files, and attempt to open them, and I get an error, not because my computer runs out of resources, but because Windows has run out of drive letters.

I consider that is a bug, a hopelessly dinosaurian feature, a limitation of Windows that should be corrected, in the same way that 8+3 file name lengths was corrected in Windows 95. I don't care for the arguments that "26 should be enough", any more than "640KB should be enough memory for anybody"

Windows 8 is a paradigm shifter - like Windows 95 was - this surely is the Windows version to get rid of the C: drive and its companions for good.

 

[fdegrove]

Hi,

If it's mounting ISO files that is your major concern then, yes, it would be nice if Windows mounted them without automatically assigning a drive letter but expanded them into a subfolder as it does for archives for instance.

I guess one could actually imagine some software doing just that making it possible to create playlists etc.

Cheers,

 

[fafhrd]

It's not just ISOs, exactly the same restriction affects mounting multiple VHD files too.

It's dinosaurian because even an 8-bit operating system could handle up to 256 individual drives. What's wrong with giving the system the ability to use, in addition to a-z, a1 to z5 (assuming a-z is actually a0-z0, there is no drive 0 and z5=255)?

 

[SIW2]

Pismo Technic Inc. - Pismo File Mount Audit Package

I don't think it does vhd mount tho.

 

[whs]

How about using hexadecimal. Then 255 is 'FF'. No need to invent a new number system.

 

[fafhrd]

How about using hexadecimal. Then 255 is 'FF'. No need to invent a new number system.

Precisely!

But...

Where did my g:\ drive go?!!

 

[area 66]

This is a non-sense; Microsoft can't remove the letters, to many software’s companies will have to update their product.

 

[whs]

This is a non-sense; Microsoft can't remove the letters, to many software’s companies will have to update their product.

Practical thinking. I like.

 

[fdegrove]

Hi,

This is a non-sense; Microsoft can't remove the letters, to many software’s companies will have to update their product.

While a lot of software needs to know where its libraries etc. can be found, I doubt these locations need to be actual drive letters.

So why not A > Z followed by AA > AZ ad nauseam. Still easier to remember than "My tiny SSD drive at aunt Nicky's loft" no?

Ciao,

 

[fafhrd]

Drive letters are a simple translation of volume numbers in the registry, there is nothing for Microsoft to remove but the limitation of the numbers of letters in the English alphabet.

It would be a simple bit of pseudocode:

if
volume# in 0-25, use a-z
else
use aa-zz

 

[area 66]

Hi,

While a lot of software needs to know where its libraries etc. can be found, I doubt these locations need to be actual drive letters.

What about all the backup software on the market ? The Burning utility ? do I have to extend the list ?

 

[fdegrove]

Hi,


Backup up software and any other software should not require drive letters either, see the TS just above your post.

Cheers,

 

[fafhrd]

Well thanks for the discussion, it's been interesting. It seems that some of us don't want to lose the drive letters yet. There is one use of drive letters that I haven't mentioned - the use of the subst command to reduce a long and unwieldly path name to a simple virtual drive with its own letter.

Another one of the 23 (after A, C, and D) remaining letters bites the dust.