Windows 10: Making drive letter changes stick

I have the following partitions:

System partition on C
User data partition on D
DVD-RW on E
External hard drive on F

I'd like for the external hard drive to forever stick to F, but it isn't happening. If I disconnect the external HD, then connect my card reader, I'll get four drive letters (one for each card slot) in F, G, H, I. Connecting the external drive after that will give it the letter J, which it'll keep after the card reader is disconnected even through restarts, unless I manually do the rigmarole to reassign it to F.

I'd like F to be reserved to the partition on the external drive, so if I disconnect it and connect something else, that something else will get letters from G onwards even if F is currently not being used. How do I do that?

:)

 

Deleted folder

Press Windows key + X

Click Disk Management

Is the F: drive listed there?

Is it assigned a drive letter?

Can you try assigning a different drive letter?

Right click the Drive.

Click Change drive letters and paths

Choose a different drive letter - choose one near the end of the alphabet - XYZ.

See if it sticks.

 

DVD-CD

If the drive letter can be changed, and it's just a DVD drive, and you do not run anything directly from that drive letter consistently at given times, change it if you want.

Worst case, something will not work and you will have to change it back. However, your operating system could care less if your DVD drive is e or F or G or H or so on.

The drive letters of things such as your DVD drive or any USB sticks or external drives are usually unimportant unless you have a task associated with the drive letter as opposed to just using the drives to copy to and from.

 

Next time your external drive is connected and assigned to G instead of F right click on the windows start button and select Disk Management.

Select the drive and right click on it to select "Change Drive letter and paths".
In the dialog box that opens select "Change" and you can then assign the drive letter you want and click OK. This setting should then be remembered for future connections.

 

There is afaik no real way to do what you want, because this is how windows works it automaticaly assigns drive letters.

But what sometimes works is give/assign your external hard drive a "high" letter like U, V, W.
Probably windows will keep F,G,H,I for the Card reader when you connect it.
And if you Lucky windows will keep/reassign the external hard drive to your chosen high letter.

 

You can try program named USBDLM. The author claims that it do (among other things) just the thing you want.
It is free for personal use and addware free according to Softpedia.

 

I'll give it a shot, thanks.

 

What Philc43 suggests works. However I would suggest you allocate a higher drive letter.

Why? If you plug in other devices, they will use drive letters above E so F may not be available.
If you allocate the drive you're interested in drive R: say, that will always be available.

I use this technique for the disks I use for my disk image backups.