Windows 10: Drive letters change when multiple drives plugged in.

My main external backup drive was assigned to drive letter G:. Upon plugging two usb drives in today that drive's letter got changed from G: to H: Why does that happen?

Because that drive is used for Macrium daily backups assigned as G: in the backup definition the backup did not run.

:)

 

Can 2 drives have the same letter?

I have an external hard drive that I have assigned a letter to so that it is always the same letter. that is, it doesn't change letter if another drive is connected. I assign a high letter (P so that it won't conflict with other drives. Can I have 2
drives with the same letter, assuming they are not connected at the same time? That is, I plug in one drive and my computer always sees it as P:. I unplug it and plug in a different drive which my computer also sees as P:

 

installing from disc

When the key is inserted it should be allocated a drive letter, when you right click a file or folder the Send To submenu should include that drive.

If you don't get a drive letter then there is something more fundamentally wrong. Open Device manager with the key disconnected, plug in the key and look for changes with a yellow exclamation indicating a problem initialising the drive.

 

Hi, if you assign the same drive letter to two different USB drives, one will get lost. Windows can only remember one letter per drive, assuming you've assigned it in Disk Management.

So it's simple- keep them unique.

(Great you're using disk imaging!)

 

Hi Dalchina,

Does that mean Windows max drive letter assignment is up to H? I currently have C: D: E: F: G: H:

It appears to me that one of my usb drives stole drive letter G: from the backup drive *Confused

Yes disk imaging is must, especially with this spate of ransomware although I'd hope not to pick that up in the first place!

 

No, example:

USB A - you allocate letter R
USB B - you also allocate R

If you plug A in after B , A will lose its allocated letter.

 

What you need to do is start assigning your external hard drives starting with Z:. It will always be remembered. If you have another external hard drive, assign it with Y:, etc. As far as your thumb drives, unless you have an application that uses your thumb drive and requires a specific drive address, assign it the next lower drive address, otherwise just let the system assign the next available drive address.

 

These are relatively old posts but may help:
Microsoft Corporation

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/...e-letters.html

One thing I do with all my drives is give them a unique Label [name], helps me identify them in two ways.




C: and D: are 2 partitions on the only internal HDD [1TB total]

 

But that won't help with Macrium Reflect because you can't set Macrium Reflect to save the backup images onto labelled partitions, you can only set it to drive letters. So if he labels his partition of backups as "Backups" - and it moves from G: to H:, the Macrium backup routine will still fail to run. It will be easier for the OP to see where the Backups drive is, but not Macrium Reflect.

 

I haven't forgot about this thread...
@storageman So if drive letters aren't manually assigned Windows will auto assign each time correct? How then does it sometimes assign the same drive letter to drives even after unplugging and re-plugging them?

If Windows has already assigned a drive letter do I still have to manually assign that letter to the drive so it's not forgotten?

Most of my drives default labels are easy enough to keep track of. Backup drive is a Seagate Expansion Drive and it's easy to know this is the backup drive.

@NavyLCDR That's handy to remember for Macrium Reflect.

 

If the drive has never been assigned a Drive letter, then windows will select the next available letter when you plug in that drive. For example - My system has a "C" drive (OS only), a "D" drive (Data only), a "E" (Dvd burner), if I plug in a device that never was assigned a drive letter, it will always be assigned "F" as long as nothing else is residing there, when it is plugged in. If I remove the device in "F" and then plug it back in, it will be assigned to "F".

I have 9 external hard drives for backups. They start with "Z" thru "R". For this system, the "U" drive is always used for Macrium Backups. I have set up Macrium to always backup to "U". Multiple backups are kept in separate directories on "U". Depending on which sub directory I'm using for backups at this time, I have separate Batch files that are used. I always keep more than 2 backup sets + I also keep backups of the backups on "R". I have batch files set up to copy the backup sets from "U" to "R". Note that the directory structure is the same on every one of these backup disks. Since I have multiple W10 systems, they also use the same structure as this system does, but they each use different drive letters.

Hope that clears it up.