Reserving drive letters

[JayE]

Hi,

I've just started using a USB Memory Stick in my home laptop PC, and the main idea was to use it to share files between my home PC and my PC at work, as I sometimes work on projects at home.

But when I take the Stick to work and plug it into my Windows XP Pro PC, it automatically assigns the drive the letter E, even though it's already mapped by my network as the letter for the entire network's files ! So the files on my disk appear mixed up with the root directory on the network, rather than separate.

Why is this happening ? How can I stop it happening ?

Your urgent help would be appreciated.

Regards,
Jay/UK

 

[bcastner]

Remove temporarily the map on E:

Start, Run, net use e: /delete

Now use Disk Mangement to change the drive letter for the USB device to something other than E, and a letter not mapped.

Now logout and login again.

 

[JayE]

Hi,

Drives D and E are allocated as my CD-ROM drive and CD-RW drives respectively.

I would like it to ignore F as not available and assign G and H to my memory stick.

The problem seems to be that because F is not a LOGICAL drive, but a mapping pointing to our network server that the system is not recognising it as a RESSERVED drive letter.

Please can you help.

Regards,
Jay/UK

 

[bcastner]

I understand the issue, but the operating system is not going to change its enumeration of a local device in the presence of a network map.

You can:

. either use the Disk Management tool to change the drive letter of the device after its enumeration;

. or, if you feel comfortable with its use, Diskpart.exe would allow you to script the drive letter change using the "Assign" statement:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=300415

. or, change the network mapping. For modern workstations using drive letter F is increasingly unwise, as you have discovered. This is the best long-term strategy.