I've been researching this and the consensus seems to be that it's not possible. But you guys are so smart, you must know a super secret way to do this :)

I use an external USB hard drive to backup files on my PC, and I can assign a drive letter in Disk Management that follows the drive from PC to PC.

But my wife does so little on her PC, that I just stuck in a 32GB SanDisk Cruzer Flash Drive. I tried to transfer her backup files after a crash to another PC (using a backup/restore program), but since the drive letter changed on the flash drive, the backup software couldn't make sense out of it.

So... It there a way to assign a PERMANENT drive letter to my flash drive that will maintain even if plugged into a different computer?

Thanks All...

Have you tried this ?


Assign a Permanent Letter to a USB Thumb Drive | Windows 7 | Windows Tools, Help & Guides

Interesting. Thanks.

I'm running XP (this article refers to Win7), but I read about a version of mmc for XP. It seems to add something called "Snap In", before you assign a drive letter. But they don't define what that is.

The people that have used this method complain that it only maintains the drive letter if used on the same computer.

I assigned a drive letter just using disk management, and when I plug in the flash drive to another PC the drive letter changes, but if I plug it back into the host PC, my assigned drive letter comes back (including the name I gave it).

Can you tell me what "snap in" is about, and whether it might maintain the drive letter on a different computer?

There is a reason that the OS is responsible for assigning drive letters and not the flash or USB device itself. If your home PC has one hard drive and one optical drive then the next letter available (typically assigned next letter) would be C (hard) > D (optical) < E. If you take the drive to a friends house who has four hard drives two optical drives and a permanently mounted memory card reader, you cannot use E cause the next available is way out there. If you assign Z so that cannot happen the other OS is still going to assign the next available.
By the way, I have found that reserving the letter directly after the hard drives for virtual drives like Daemon Tools Lite or Alcohol 120% eliminates a lot of issues with those type drives. So after I have installed my OS and before I install Daemon Tools, I assign drive letters to all my opticals to get them out of the order like S for Sony DVD burner or P for a Plextor or L for Lite-on etc. That way when I install Daemon Tools it will get the next letter in line after the hard drives (C and D hard drives means E Daemon Tools). Believe it or not it eliminates a lot of unrecognized images and even if the other opticals revert, they will revert past the virtual drive and can be reassigned special letters again.
In your case I suspect if you assign a letter in your home PC and then take to Grandma's, all you have to do is assign the same letter and name there and it should stick. I personally do not see an advantage to doing so but everybody has their own idea of what's advantageous.

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Originally Posted by mitchsc

I've been researching this and the consensus seems to be that it's not possible.

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I agree.
You may find a boot script for the USB drive but many computers/AV programs are set not to run them automatically. Plus as others mentioned there is too much potential for drive naming conflicts for the OS to do this even though you know the two computers you're using are OK.

Appzalien:

I appreciate the tutorial (no sarcasm intended). In my case, I only wanted to lock the drive letter on my wife's backup flash drive. I recently had the experience of trying to restore files on a replacement PC using backup software that didn't know what to do with the backup flash drive because the drive letter was different in the replacement PC, since it had one less optical drive (sorry for the long sentence there).

Of course, I didn't know why I kept getting errors until much later, after I reloaded the files manually.

So then I got the brilliant idea of locking the drive letter so that wouldn't happen again. I thought it would be easy for some reason. As a home user that's not on a network, I don't think I would run into too many problems having 26 letters in the alphabet at my disposal. But it still seems that this is not an easy thing to do.

BUT!! You gave me an excellent and simple solution (if I can remember to do it). If I'm ever in this situation again, all I need to do is go into disk mgmt on the new PC and assign the matching drive letter. I assume this would keep the backup software happy.

So thanks for the great idea... Really

I appreciate your input as well NK. Always good to hear from you.

Here are 2 articles on "snap in"

What is snap-in? - Definition from Whatis.com

How To Create Custom MMC Snap-in Tools Using Microsoft Management Console

Thank you very much CD. I'll read them tomorrow. (Have a sick kid tonight)

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Originally Posted by mitchsc

Thank you very much CD. I'll read them tomorrow. (Have a sick kid tonight)

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Good luck with the kid and I hope they feel better after a nights rest.

Geez... The MMC is one complex beast. I think I'd better stay away from this one.

Thanks again :-)