Making drive letters permanent?

[jworld2]

I have a sandisk thumb drive that in the past, whenever I plugged it in, would load up two drives, E and F. It would always be E and F. But lately, the drive letters for the thumb drive have changed to like G and H. I don't know why. I can change them back using disk management, but inevitably they will get reverted back to G and H. Is there a way to make the drive letters permanent so they don't change, or at least find out what is making them change?

[Bob_180_Bob]

Hi,
Every time you plug in your thumb drive it is a new installation and windows allocates a drive letter to it. For it's letter/s to have changed, you must have added something that windows has allocated a drive letter to and therefore goes to the next available letter. "G and H" is your thumb drive partitioned??
Your best bet is to allocate another drive letter/s to your thumb drive further down the line , like "X" and "Y" , that way they should always be the same.

[MidiMagic]

If you forget to use the eject button in the Notification Area of the taskbar before removing the thumb drive, it leaves a drive definition in there of the drive it still thinks is there. Then when you plug in the drive again, it requests two new drive letters.

[jworld2]

The thing is, I've never been ejecting before, because my computer would always say that it was being used and couldn't be ejected. I recently got rid of my old firewall and antivirus programs and got new ones. Maybe it will eject now. I don't know why that would cause the problem though.

[caperjack]

The thing is, I've never been ejecting before, because my computer would always say that it was being used and couldn't be ejected. I recently got rid of my old firewall and antivirus programs and got new ones. Maybe it will eject now. I don't know why that would cause the problem though.

when mine won't disconnect i just log out of user and then log back in ,usually disconnects then

[gerbil]

Just a query... I guess I under-utilise thumbdrives cos I only use them for file transport, but... all this only applies if you've formatted them to NTFS, right? Or running apps from them?

[Bob_180_Bob]

Hi Gerbil,
I am still trying to work out if you are just having fun or what??

I have never formatted a thumb drive or run programs from them, I have only used them for file transportation as well.
Every thing mentioned here is still applicable.
!. It is necessary to go to "Safetly remove hardware" and disconnect your thumb drive before removing it.
2. A drive letter is asscribed to it when you plug it in.
3. Sometimes, you get the message that it can not be stopped as it is in use by another program.

I can not believe that you needed to ask such a question.

[gerbil]

I was being serious, Bob.. I rarely use the lil fellows... maybe to take some photos etc over to some other puter or to get a special printing job done, and I format them with FAT32. And whenever I click the lil tray icon it always says Cleared to Pull or similar immediately, so I don't check anymore, just whip em out. The sys seems to understand...
With FAT32 file transfers appear to be not cached, so when the hourglass is gone the file is there. I did try NTFS for a bit, but with that format copying may not be done immediately, hence you have to advise the sys that you wish to unplug.
Heck, when I bought my first I thought this will come in handy, an sure enough, at least 3 months later, it did.
I shall have to play with making one bootable, and if I can sort out keeping my BIOS files on one for reloading, then my floppy drive is so gone.

[caperjack]

when i pull mine out with out closing it if fuggs up and i usually have to format it to fix it . i have one formatted ntfs,i use them to install spyware programs on infected computes or just good working computers ,i have one with portable apps on it ,like email ,firefox browser .some open office apps ,music ,picture editor ,great for some things.got themat www.portableapps.com

[gerbil]

Right. For techs they must be pretty convenient. For puddleducks like me, well, they beat cds for a lot of temp stuff.
I've never felt like taking apps on holiday with me.

[caperjack]

I've never felt like taking apps on holiday with me.

LOL

[Bob_180_Bob]

I then my floppy drive is so gone.

What is a floppy drive??? LOL

[caperjack]

What is a floppy drive??? LOL

thats, that thing that hangs out front of !! no never mind thats something else .