by Gaeta » Wed Sep 05, 2012 9:35 am
From my experience; this is mostly a windows problem where it decides it wants to assign a different drive letter when you plug in an external drive. I myself have 6 different external drives. So it can be a bit of an issue when a program is expecting a specific drive letter to access a specific drive. Windows does provide a solution (called Disk Management) that has worked for me. My approach is to assign drive letters to specific drives a bit up the drive letter list. I start with letter K for the three drives where I need a "constant" letter assignment. Every time that drive is plugged in it gets that letter. New drives get lower letters (e.g. E) and do not highjack the assignments.
To do this; plug in your drive; then
1. Click on Start
2. Enter diskmgmt.msc into the search field & press enter
The Disk Management Utility opens; displaying active drive assignments. At the bottom of the screen, right click on your drive. Select "Change Drive Letter and Paths" option. That opens another dialog; press the Change button and select the new drive letter. As I mentioned, select a letter a higher than e; say M: (for media monkey) or whatever else works for you. Every time you plug that drive in it will get that letter. Close all the dialogs and exit the utility. Then you will have to update MM to scan that drive and remove scanning of the old drive. Of course; if you always leave the external drive plugged in; the drive letter will not change (except possibly on a Windows boot)
This Disk Management Utility has options that allow you to do considerable damage to yourself, so if you are not familiar with it, it is probably a good idea to google it and do a bit of reading on it.
From my experience; this is mostly a windows problem where it decides it wants to assign a different drive letter when you plug in an external drive. I myself have 6 different external drives. So it can be a bit of an issue when a program is expecting a specific drive letter to access a specific drive. Windows does provide a solution (called Disk Management) that has worked for me. My approach is to assign drive letters to specific drives a bit up the drive letter list. I start with letter K for the three drives where I need a "constant" letter assignment. Every time that drive is plugged in it gets that letter. New drives get lower letters (e.g. E) and do not highjack the assignments.
To do this; plug in your drive; then
1. Click on Start
2. Enter diskmgmt.msc into the search field & press enter
The Disk Management Utility opens; displaying active drive assignments. At the bottom of the screen, right click on your drive. Select "Change Drive Letter and Paths" option. That opens another dialog; press the Change button and select the new drive letter. As I mentioned, select a letter a higher than e; say M: (for media monkey) or whatever else works for you. Every time you plug that drive in it will get that letter. Close all the dialogs and exit the utility. Then you will have to update MM to scan that drive and remove scanning of the old drive. Of course; if you always leave the external drive plugged in; the drive letter will not change (except possibly on a Windows boot)
This Disk Management Utility has options that allow you to do considerable damage to yourself, so if you are not familiar with it, it is probably a good idea to google it and do a bit of reading on it.