Windows 10: Already assigned and active drive letters being reassigned

I have many systems in house that have dual USB hdd docks. These normally have two drives installed.

I have assigned specific drives letters via disk manager.

However when another USB storage device is added the drive letters for the two active drives in the dock will instantly be changed.

This occurs even when both drives are copying between each other. This is really screwing up my applications and backups.

Is there a way to prevent this from occurring?

:)

 

USB drive letter assignments

Long-winded background:

I have a USB flash drive that I assigned to drive D: in Disk Management. Occasionally when I'm not thinking, I plug it in when another external drive is connected and already assigned D: by Windows. The flash drive then gets reassigned as E:. I know I
can switch it back to D: in Disk Management, but frankly my original reason for assigning a fixed letter is not such a big deal anymore. Is there a way to "undo" fixed letter assignments? I'd like to just let the drive float again.

TL;DR:

Once you assign a fixed drive letter in Disk Management, is there a way to "undo" and let the drive assignment float again?

 

Power outage change my external drive letters again

I have 2 external USB drives connected to my W10 computer. Originally when installed, these drives were assigned D: and E: (C: contains all the programs, etc. and F: was configured by HP as the Factory Backup).

Just had a power outage, and when the computer rebooted, these drives were assigned the letters E: and L:.

After previous power outages, I was able to reassign the drive letters back to their original letters, but this time, when I use the disk management program, the letter D is not available for reassignment.

I do not keep my data files on the C: drive, preferring to keep all my data on the E: drive. The D: drive is used as a continuous backup for the E: drive.

Being unable to restore the drive letters makes all my file and backup schemes invalid since the drive letters are all wrong and I don't want to figure out and correct all my links.

How can I restore my original configuration?

***Post moved by the moderator to the appropriate forum category.***

 

Hi there is a simple trick that may help:

In diskmgmt.msc, change the drive letter of a drive of interest to (e.g. x - late in the alphabet so you're not likely to need it otherwise).
Now you will find every time you plug that drive in it will be assigned the same letter.
I use this for my backup drive for disk imaging (which everyone is strongly advised to use)

Repeat for other drives using other letters if it works for you.

Note: I don't know how using a dock may affect this compared to plugging it in directly.

 

It mentions in my original post that I have specifically assigned drive letters via disk manager.

This doesn't seem to help.

It appears when 2 USB devices have been setup this way and have conflicting letters the OS gives preference to the newly added device.

I believe when there is a conflict it should be first come is first served.

 

I see what you mean now.. can only suggest you assign individual letters to individual drives. I suspect it would be optimistic to expect different or better behaviour, unfortunately.