Hi Experts,

I have another problem.

I have recently installed a Maxtor OneTouch 4, 750gb Ext HD into my PC.

The initial drive letter allocated was 'G'. My system then decided to change the letter to 'M', which meant I could not access some of my files & programs installed on the drive. Today I find that the letter has changed again, this time to 'N'.

I have one other Internal 150gb HD partitioned into 3 (letters C, E & F). I don't have a 'D' showing anywhere.

There are several Removable Disks in my system, one of which was assigned the letter 'N'. Now the Maxtor Ext Drive letter has taken the Removable Disk letter 'N' and reassigned the Removable Disk letter with the 'M' it had been using.

I have added no new hardware, especially drives to my system and am at a loss as to what has happened.

I believe I can re-letter the Maxtor HD by accessing Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Disk Management, selecting the Maxtor drive, opening the 'Action' dropdown menu, selecting All tasks/Change drive letter and paths.

The problem with this is the Removable Disk already has the drive letter 'M' which I need to use for the Maxtor drive and because of this there is no 'M' available in the 'Change drive letter' option and there does not appear to be any way that I can rename the Removable Disk letter from its current 'M'.

Can anyone please help with this dilemma?

I hope my question is easily understandable and makes sense.

Regards to all

Poseidon

...there does not appear to be any way that I can rename the Removable Disk letter from its current 'M'

Why not?

You're on the right track. In the same manner, re-letter all the removable disks to higher letters, say, starting with Z and working backwards. This frees the lower letters so they will then be available in the list when re-lettering the external drive. Then re-letter the removables again if you want the lettering to be contiguous.

there does not appear to be any way that I can rename the Removable Disk letter from its current 'M'.

Hi Scleros,

Thank you for your reply.

I know that we cannot use the same letter more than once but when I go into Admin Tools, the Removable Disks are not shown.

Can you please tell me where I would find these in order to change the drive letters of these?

The only drives showing in Admin Tools are the partitioned internal drive and the Maxtor Ext Drive.

I am probably being a but thick about finding and re-lettering the Removable Disks, but that's nothing for me (Lol).

Thanks.

Poseidon

I'll risk being thicker. Can you post a screenshot of your Disk Management window? (CTRL-PRTSCRN and then paste into Windows Paint and save as JPG file)

What sort of removable drives do you have? I have 2 optical drives, 2 memory card drives, and 3 virtual CD drives for game discs that all show up in Disk Management. Floppy drives do not show up and have reserved letters A and B. Also, double check that there are not any network drives that managed to get mapped to identical letters used by physical drives.

Hmm, you may need to right-click on the left gray removable heading instead of the right-hand partition block to get the "Change drive and paths..." context menu option:

Hi Scleros,

Thanks for all the help and time you took in helping me.

I received an answer from the Ext HD manufacturers at the same time as yours and they said exactly the same as you.

Funny but I did not notice the other removable disks when I went via the Control Panel but have just looked again and they are there.

All is now well (or appears to be) and I can access the software and files again.

Thanks again.

John
(Poseidon)

Thanks for all the help and time you took in helping me.

No problem, glad it was resolvable.