Question Change Drive Letter and Path?

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

Running Win 7 Home Premium. (Yes, I know, but I am!)

I have a USB EHD that when plugged in is getting drive letter G instead of F that I need it to be.

Is there any problem in manually changing it in Disk Management?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Running Win 7 Home Premium. (Yes, I know, but I am!)

I have a USB EHD that when plugged in is getting drive letter G instead of F that I need it to be.

Is there any problem in manually changing it in Disk Management?

As long as it's not the boot drive, and the drive letter that you wish to assign, is not currently occupied by a network or physical drive, then go for it.

 

[aigomorla]

As long as it's not the boot drive, and the drive letter that you wish to assign, is not currently occupied by a network or physical drive, then go for it.

50% correct, not only the boot drive, but also programs which point to that drive, or software you installed to that drive.

As long as you have nothing in registry also pointing to the drive... ie, you installed software to that drive, you should have no issues changing the letter.
If you have software installed to that drive, then you may want to uninstall said software first before you change drive letters.

 

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

^^^ That's part of my problem. Acronis wanted to do a back up to this EHD but since it's now G instead of F, the backup didn't happen. Normally when I plug it in, it takes the F allocation. In this case, I had plugged a different EHD in first and that took the F. I'm hoping once I do a PC restart things will return to what I had.


But that still leaves a future issue. I don't leave this drive plugged in all the time, so how can I assure that it will either always be F or make Acronis find it no matter what letter it is?

 

[deustroop]

As far as I can see, No possible.
Windows assigns letters on a first come, first served basis. Cloners target lettered drives . If you want F to be in a certain place, you will have to put it there.

 

[VirtualLarry]

But that still leaves a future issue. I don't leave this drive plugged in all the time, so how can I assure that it will either always be F or make Acronis find it no matter what letter it is?

Use a manually-assigned drive letter, towards the end of the alphabet. Like M, or X, or something.

 

[deustroop]

AFAIK the issue with that is when the drive is pulled it loses the manually assigned letter and when plugged back in, will be assigned from the alphabet sequentially on a first come basis,

 

[VirtualLarry]

AFAIK the issue with that is when the drive is pulled it loses the manually assigned letter and when plugged back in, will be assigned from the alphabet sequentially on a first come basis,

No, it won't, it stores a persistent mapping between the volume-id and the manually-assigned drive letter in the registry. Try it!

 

[deustroop]

yes--try it 🙂

 

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

Well, since it's a WD drive that goes into a USB port, I guess I could try either W or U.

 

[aigomorla]

nah at this point OP.
Any solution is going to be more headache.

Find a external, or a NAS.
Backup contents using robocopy if its a large drive, or just use windows explorer and copy the drive over.
Physically remove the drive.

Run CCleaner. Have the registry clear flush out all the invalid pointers on registry.
(caution, it will sometimes wipe out your cookies and other stuff, unless you tell it not to touch them.)

Then reformat the drive, reinstall it, and recopy over from NAS or external.


You probably would of been done with this, if you started the day you made this thread.

 

[deustroop]

Well, since it's a WD drive that goes into a USB port, I guess I could try either W or U.

Try it (now).