AnnMarie Posted January 23, 2011 Report Share Posted January 23, 2011 With more and more portable memory sticks and drives, they don't always have the same letter designations when plugged into USB.Is there a way to substitute the disk "NAME:" instead of X: so that desktop links will always point to the same disk when the letter designations chages? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MANEMAN Posted January 23, 2011 Report Share Posted January 23, 2011 Plug in your device. Open "My Computer" so that you can see all of the drives.When you have identified your memory stick or drive that you wish to rename, "Right Click" on it and choose "Properties".Using the "General" tab you will see an area where you can rename with up to eleven digits (including spaces)Hope this is of some help.If you need further help please come back again.John. :)P.S. You will have renamed, but the Drive letter is still subject to change according to other peripherals plugged in. i.e a shortcut placed on the desktop will not neccessarily always point to the device you require. :( Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnnMarie Posted January 23, 2011 Author Report Share Posted January 23, 2011 You outlined my problem exactly. In this day and age where the tendency is toward more and more portable storage devices there needs to be a way to refer to it by name instead of the letter. It is not practical to have to edit every link on my desktop (and other places) every thime the letters change.I see the day coming when the computer is a tool with no permanent memory and your programs and data go with you from tool to tool and become "your" computer when you plug in your memory system.It seems that it would be a simple matter to look at the disk address of a file and if the disk designation has more than 1 character and the colon then it must be the NAME of the disk. A simple and quite small ram based lookup table could be maintained by the operating system that looks up the current LETTER: from a NAME: in the list. This would maintain the legacy system in use now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andsome Posted January 23, 2011 Report Share Posted January 23, 2011 I have allocated letters quite high in the alphabet to plug in drives and these letters always stick. Four plug in memory sticks are S, T, U, and V. Two plug in hard drives are M and N. No problems at all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Digerati Posted January 23, 2011 Report Share Posted January 23, 2011 I have allocated letters quite high in the alphabet to plug in drives and these letters always stickWhen I first set up a new computer, I always set my CD drive (if I use one) as Q and my DVD as V. In this way, when I insert a memory stick or removable drive, the letters for my opticals never shift. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnnMarie Posted January 23, 2011 Author Report Share Posted January 23, 2011 Oh cool, great information, how do you designate a "fixed" letter to a memory stick or disk? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnnMarie Posted January 23, 2011 Author Report Share Posted January 23, 2011 Perhaps you can't set it as a property of the portable drive, I couldn't find any help on it.Is it something you set in BIOS and only works on that computer? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andsome Posted January 24, 2011 Report Share Posted January 24, 2011 Start/right click computer/manage/right clickdisk management/Then with the drive plugged in, right click in the drive itself where it says fat 32 etc, and select change drive letter and paths. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnnMarie Posted January 25, 2011 Author Report Share Posted January 25, 2011 Cool, that's why I couldn't find it, I was using XP. Took it to a computer running W7 and found it. Thanks a bunch.Ahh therein lies the problem, XP doesn't see the new letter and just allocates in sequence. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andsome Posted January 25, 2011 Report Share Posted January 25, 2011 Cool, that's why I couldn't find it, I was using XP. Took it to a computer running W7 and found it. Thanks a bunch.Ahh therein lies the problem, XP doesn't see the new letter and just allocates in sequence.I used a similar principle in XP Home. Maybe the procedure is slightly different, it was some time ago,B) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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