Microsoft Windows: Unfriendly Letters

As many years as I have been wrestling with Microsoft Windows, I have unwillingly accepted the operating system's default assignment of drive letters to USB devices. That's because I was totally unaware that users can themselves seize control over the drive letters assigned to USB external hard drives. I have only recently discovered this fact.

Why does this even matter? Well, our family has four computers: one laptop for each of my two children plus a desktop and a backup laptop for my own use. By default, two of the four machines assigned drive letter G to its associated external hard drive while the other two assigned drive letter E. And one of those changed to F when I affixed a USB thumb drive in addition.

This kind of inconsistency drives me nuts. When I want to manually copy files from the computer to its external hard drive, I am constantly challenged to remember which machine(s) uses E: or F: or G: as the drive letters. And when I write a batch program to automate that backup process, I have to employ multiple conditional "if" statements based on the respective machine names to account for the differences.

Enough is enough. In Windows 7, follow these steps to set the drive letter for external USB hard drives:

• Click the "Start" orb in the lower left corner of the main window
• Right-click on "Computer"
• Select "Manage" from the resulting menu
• Select "Disk Management" from the left pane
• Right-click on the device of interest
• Select "Change Drive Letters and Paths..."
• Click on the "Change..." button
• Select the desired letter from the pull-down menu
• Click the "OK" button to save your work

The process for Windows XP is very similar:

• Click the "Start" orb in the lower left corner of the main window
• Click the "Settings | Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Computer Management" menu selections; alternatively, open Windows Explorer, right-click on "My Computer," then click on the "Manage" menu option
• Select "Disk Management" from the left pane
• Right-click on the device of interest
• Select "Change Drive Letters and Paths..."
• Click on the "Change..." button
• Select the desired letter from the pull-down menu
• Click the "OK" button to save your work

Voilà! Using this method, I have set all four external hard drives to the same letter device designator. My unreliable memory is no longer taxed when I manually copy individual files for backup, and I am able to remove all of the condition statements from my batch programs for bulk backups.

And it only took me 5+ years to stumble onto this technique!