How to avoid pendrives letters changing?

[amflores]

I use two notebooks. One running Win8.1 PRO (64bits), the other Win7 Home Premium (32bits).
I also have an external HD, and three pen-drives I use with both notebooks, as needed.
Some programs I use (a password manager, bkups, between many others) save data on these drives, and I need that the drive letters attributed to them DO NOT CHANGE no matter the notebooks they are connected to.
My problem is that the letters given to these drives keep changing when they are used on the notebooks and the programs can't find the paths to store or retrieve data from.
How can I make the drive letters to remain the same no matter the notebook they are being used with?
To choose the drive letters I use the Control Panel "Administrative Tools<>Computer Management<>Disk Management"

Any help will be welcome.

Cheers, and a Happy Holiday Season.

Flores

 

[alexncfc]

I don't know if this will help but for years I have set my CD/DVD drives to Y: and Z: so that adding drives doesn't muddle it all up. How about setting the letter as Z: and seeing if that helps?

 

[Berton]

This post is also on Windows Secrets.

Just a note, the last several versions of Windows default to assigning Z: for Networked drives and work back up the alphabet. If having 2 or more computers or a NAS on the network I'd jump in the middle, somewhere around M: or N:.

 

[CountMike]

Drives do not have any letters permanently assigned to them. OS does that. About only thing you can do with your own computers to stick USB memories in same ports all the time.

 

[amflores]

Hello CountMike,
have not received an e-mail abou your post.
Anyway what you wrote does make sense
Thanks,
Flores

 

[DeaconFrost]

I use flash drives across four different computers, and the letters don't change, assuming I don't have other flash drives plugged in. For example, on my work tower, I have two hard drives and a DVD burner. So, any flash drive I plug in gets F assigned to it automatically. It will always be F, unless I have another flash drive plugged in already, in which case G would be assigned. You shouldn't have any issues with letters changing, unless you have a varying number of drives already connected.

 

[KYHI]

How is the program run and where is the date stored?

That's say you have program on usb drive D that you run and you want the program to write readme.txt file to a folder also on D

You would refer to D\program and the output would be referred to

%~dp0\folder\readme.txt

Since the program is run from D the drive letter of D is used by> %~dp0

 

[amflores]

.....I use flash drives across four different computers, and the letters don't change, assuming I don't have other flash drives plugged in... You shouldn't have any issues with letters changing, unless you have a varying number of drives already connected.

Hi DeaconFrost,

My problem is that I have two programs on my HD (one is a bkup program named FileBack, which data is saved to an external HD, the other is Roboform, which saves passwords to a pen-drive).

If their drive letters change, the programs can't find where to save their data.

Regards,
Flores

 

[amflores]

.....How is the program run and where is the date stored?

Hello KIHI,

Please refer to my answer to DeaconFrost (above).

Thanks a lot.

Flores

 

[DeaconFrost]

My problem is that I have two programs on my HD (one is a bkup program named FileBack, which data is saved to an external HD, the other is Roboform, which saves passwords to a pen-drive).

If their drive letters change, the programs can't find where to save their data.

Regards,
Flores

I get what you are saying. I've used SyncToy with external drives in the past, and if the drive letter was changed, the software wouldn't be able to create a new sync/backup. I'm just saying that your drives shouldn't be getting different letters, unless something is already plugged in and using the letter you want/need to work.

 

[KYHI]

here is how you would search for a drive letter based on the Volume label.. Which you would need to label the exthd and Password disk

Label your External Hard drive say (EXTHD1) and your usb stick (say PASSWORD1)


>
set DriveLabel=EXTHD1

for %%a in (a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z) do (
for /f "tokens=6 delims= " %%i in ('vol %%a: ^|find "drive"') do (
echo %%i | find /i "%DriveLabel%" > nul
if not errorlevel 1 set DriveLetter=%%a
)
)
%driveletter%\ and what ever path

>
What that part does is it finds the volume label EXTHD1 and then the drive letter assigned to it..

How do you select the file output when doing backups.. does the program ask you where to save it?
Or is a .bat or ,cmd file

 

[KYHI]

the most common backup is a file type copy..

So the next part would be

copy C\picures %driveletter%\Folder\

 

[amflores]

I get what you are saying. I've used SyncToy with external drives in the past, and if the drive letter was changed, the software wouldn't be able to create a new sync/backup. I'm just saying that your drives shouldn't be getting different letters, unless something is already plugged in and using the letter you want/need to work.

Hello DeaconFrost,
I will give up this problem for awhile.
Im retired, and my house is full to the brim, with my wife, 2 grandsons (4 and 5y old), my 2 daughters and husbands.
Besides, with a temperature like that of Orlando in mid August.
Quite impossible to have a moment of my own.

I will return to this matter in a couple of weeks.

Cheers,
Flores