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General discussion

Making an external hard drive appear with the drive letter T

Jan 14, 2011 12:48AM PST

I move around a lot and always carry my external hard drive with me and use it as a kind of medium for all my data storage on different computers, some of which I only use a couple times or on rare occasion. Therefore I have installed many programs on my external hard drive and have created shortcuts as a kind of gheto "desktop" folder in the main folder of the hard drive. My problem is that when ever I get onto a new computer my shortcuts won't work until I go in and manually change the drive letter to match what is in the shortcuts. My question is...is there a way to make it so that no matter what computer I plug my hard drive into it will be assigned letter T? Or will I really have to go and manually assign it on every computer first? Thanks for the help

Discussion is locked

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I am not sure about a permanate drive name, but...
Jan 14, 2011 3:20AM PST

you can certainly create a "volume label" for that drive which can be lot more descriptive than just plain old "T" anyway.

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Sorry no.
Jan 14, 2011 9:44AM PST

There is no support in any version of Windows to do that.

Odd?
Bob

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Might try USBDLM....
Jan 14, 2011 10:41AM PST
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(NT) Did it work for you ??
Jan 16, 2011 12:54AM PST
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Don't think so
Jan 17, 2011 2:41AM PST

I don't think that is what I want seeing as that has to be installed on each computer. I want something on my hard drive that when I plug it in it will tell the computer to assign it the letter T for the drive letter

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Ok....but it sounds like if you had three computers
Jan 17, 2011 4:39AM PST

in your house and you wanted to use the external HDD on any of them, installing USBDLM could help make them all recognize the external HDD as drive "T"...right ?

VAPCMD

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Lots of computers
Jan 17, 2011 11:46PM PST

I want to be able to plug my hard drive in anywhere, on a computer I have never been on before and have the computer assign it to drive T

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Ok, I can't stand it any longer,
Jan 17, 2011 4:43PM PST

why drive "T"?

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Because
Jan 17, 2011 11:45PM PST

Simply because I don't think anyone else would have that letter already assigned for anything and I know nothing will get auto assigned that low

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Hmmm....that wouldn't work on my PC....
Jan 18, 2011 2:44AM PST

A, C, D, E, F, G and R, S, T, W, X, Y and Z are all always occupied.

Besides how many "PROGRAMS" run properly when loaded on "T" where "T" is not the boot drive.

VAPCMD

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Many
Jan 28, 2011 12:26AM PST

a lot actually

I have a "Program Files" folder on my external hard drive and I can run just about anything off of it, except things like iTunes which require a couple extra processes to be running to work. I just would like to have it always be the same drive letter on any computer I plug it in on no matter what. So that I can then create shortcuts, which are always dependent on the drive letter...

And out of curiousity...what occupies those other drives...I have never seen anything there

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Drive letter assigment
Jan 28, 2011 7:49AM PST

Unless you install the SW I mentioned on each PC .... believe you will have to set the external drive letter manually on each PC you connect it to make it work (the apps run) as intended.

Re my lineup...
A: Floppy disk drive
C: HDD (150GB-10K)
D: HDD (150GB-10K)
E: HDD (~20GB partition on 640GB)
F: HDD (~620GB partition on 640GB HDD)
G: USB Device ( MagicJacK)
R: CD-DVD Burner
S: CD-DVD Burner
T: Flash Card Reader (Printer)
W: Flash Card Reader (Standalone)
X: Flash Card Reader (Standalone)
Y: Flash Card Reader (Standalone)
Z: Flash Card Reader (Standalone)

I always set my CD-DVD drive letters as R: and S: respectively so they don't get bumped (automatically changed) if I add or repartition one of existing HDDs.

VAPCMD

PS...Hope you've got a good backup of that external as it's only a matter of time before the enclosure electronics fail or the drive itself fails.

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Is this for purpose of identification?
Jan 18, 2011 10:56AM PST

Because you don't the drive letter to change from computer to computer? If that's the case, why not just label it?