Windows 10: Permanently assign drive letters for USB drives

Hi,

I run a backup script to different USB drives at different times.

The backup script always needs to see the same drive letter for the USB drive (whichever USB drive is being used).

I know you can run compmgmt.msc, select Disk Management and then click 'Change drive letter and paths' to manually set a drive letter.

However, sometimes Windows remembers the drive letter that was manually set, but sometime it forgets.

Is there a way to permanently set a drive letter assignment for the USB drives?

Thanks in advance *Smile

:)

 

Samsung M3 portable hard drive not getting recognised on Windows 10.

Hi!

Thank you for advise!

I can agree that Win10 might not allow me to assign THE SAME PERMANENT letter to removable drive, but I think that if user is attaching USB drive to a laptop Win10 should every time at least assign ANY AVAILABLE drive letter
automatically so user can use the drive and not have to fiddle with disk management tool, what would you say?

 

How to assign a drive letter permanently for an external HDD that doesn't change no matter where i plug into?

Unfortunately, you can't permanently assign drive letters to removable drives. This is by design.

 

One other thought, if there isn't a way to permanently set a drive letter to the USB drives, is there a registry key which can make the change (that way I can just click a .reg file to make the change....)

Thanks!

 

I don't know of any way to do it natively from Windows because drive letter is windows function and doesn't stay on the drive itself.
You can try this: Download USB Drive Letter Manager (USBDLM) - MajorGeeks for instance.

 

Using Disk Management is what I do - no problems I've noticed. But I could believe your experience...

 

You could also check that you are using the correct USB in your script so you don't backup to the wrong one...

For example, make a small file on your USB F drive called USBF... Code: if exist "F:\USBF" ( rem whatever you want to do.... ) else ( echo Drive letter is wrong. )[/quote]

 

Thanks very much for the replies.

lx07, that's an awesome idea which I didn't realise was possible. If the drive letter was wrong my batch script was running and completing as though it had been successful - Doh! I've now added your code to the script with a pause, so it now stops if it can't find the right file. Perfect!

Cheers

 

Code: set USBDRIVE= FOR %%D IN (C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z) DO (DIR %%D:\USB.TAG > nul 2>&1 && (call set USBDRIVE=%%D if "%USBDRIVE%"=="" echo ERROR: NO USB DRIVE FOUND & pause echo USB IS %USBDRIVE%[/quote] Use this to search all drive letters for \USB.TAG file.