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Drive letters change

Submitted by NIXin on November 2, 2008 to Annoyance, Bug, Usability

Partition/drive letters change when you do one of the following things:
Example [A]:
1. Plug in your drive -> Windows assigns G:
2. Remove the drive
3. Insert a second drive -> Windows will once again assign G:
4. Plug in the first drive -> Windows will assign H:

Example [B]:
1. Plug in your drive -> Windows assigns G:
2. Remove the drive
3. Insert the same drive into some other (USB) port -> Windows assigns H:

Example [C]:
1. Plug in your external hard disk via USB port -> Windows assigns G:
2. Remove the device
3. Plug in your external hard disk via eSATA port (for example) -> Windows assigns H:

This is bad behavior. Why is this bad? If you have a media library with music (or photos, movies, etc.) on that removable drive, you will have to recreate that media library using the new letter. That's crazy. Not to mention stuff like links, shortcuts, playlists, etc, which all use hard-coded drive letters.

This one also applies to all NT series Windows'.

Always reserve the drive letter set up for a device by partition's GUID and remove that reservation only if there are no more drive letters available (eg. all filled up from C: to Z:).

Another solution: Switch to GUID identification (or some other) of partitions instead of drive letters and instruct developers to follow. That way the problem with letters would have no meaning, as all references to files and folders would be dynamic.

Medium

High

Not fixed

Discussion (5 comments)

NIXin wrote on November 2, 2008, 3:13pm

Changed problem description.

NIXin wrote on November 2, 2008, 3:14pm

Changed problem description.

Jones111 wrote on November 2, 2008, 4:40pm

That would be nice, although the drives should have different priorities like new internal SATA drives should have a higher chance of having lower drive letters.

NIXin wrote on November 2, 2008, 4:50pm

Why? What's the difference? I have some internal drives named W:, X:, and my SD card reader is H: (removable).

mdta wrote on November 3, 2008, 7:15pm

Good Idea, Fixed Drive letters based on the Device Ids etc

Lokitoth wrote on November 25, 2008, 2:39am

Of course, the next question is what happens when you run out of drive letters - imagine sharing files folders with friends/coworkers, and each of them has a USB key or two...

Edit: never mind, I saw you addressed that in the comment. I would favor the second option, but odds are developers will still use the old pattern and fail in epic fashion when something that relies on the new way breaks.

xpclient wrote on August 27, 2010, 8:27pm

You can change drive letters manually from Disk Management but nevertheless, this would help for removable devices. +1.

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