Problem with USB drives.

[belfrybat]

Windows 8.0. I have an external HD more or less permanently connected in one of the front sockets, and it's allocated as E:, the pendrives used to end up as F: and G:. Now something messed up. The HD is disconnected and most of my six pendrives get allocated as E:. When I remove the pendrive the HD comes back automatically.

One of the pendrives gets F: and another isn't recognized at all unless the HD is removed first. All the others interfere with the HD.

It's a hassle as I use the pendrives to collect data to be stored on the HD, the work-around is to temporarily copy to C:, remove the stick and move to E:.

How can I get the correct order back?

[Capn Bloggs]

Easy. Plug in the USB you want to allocate a specific letter.

Right-click on (My) Computer (if you can find it ha ha) and choose Manage.

Then in the next window, click on Disk Management.

In the lower window, you'll see all attached drives, including ones that haven't been allocated a drive letter. This scared the beejeesus out of me when I downgraded to W7 and W8, but don't worry.

Simply right click on the drive concerned and choose "Change Drive Letter and Paths". (Re)assign the letters you want.

If an internal drive already has the letter you want to allocate to the USB drive eg the DVD, just change that one to another, then give the USB drive the letter.

Once the letters are assigned to the USB drives, they will stick on that machine unless another drive takes it before you insert it eg a phantom drive with hidden files or folders.

[Keef]

What Cap'n B said.

I have four plug-in USB hard drives, backup for the use of. Each appears with its allocated drive letter, regardless of which of the others is plugged in. There's a file in the root directory of each as well, saying "THIS IS DRIVE R" (or whatever) but it's never been needed.

USB sticks don't seem able to do the same thing. They all appear as Drive O, unless there's already one there. My Panasonic Camera is Drive P (keeps it simple).

[belfrybat]

Tried the reassigning thing, no joy. The sticks come up as F: but nuke E:, except the one that's not recognized at all with the HD plugged in.