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USB Drive Letter Manager

When a removable drive (USB flash drive, flash card reader, portable hard drive) is attached for the first time, Windows mounts it to the first available ‘local’ drive letter. If there is a network share on this letter, Windows XP will use it anyway for the new USB drive because since XP network shares are specific to the current user and not visible in the context of the system where the letter is assigned. The USB drive then appears to be invisible.

You can change the letter assignments in the Windows Disk Management Console (right click My Computer -> Manage -> Disk management), but you have to do it again for every new device.

And, for USB devices that have no serial number (in violation of the USB standards) you have to do it too when you attach it to a different USB port.

So change the network drive’s letter to a higher one to get the lower ones available for external drives. Or let USB drive letter manager change the letters of USB drives for you.

Microsoft is aware of this and calls it a problem. Meanwhile a hotfix is available (KB297694) and the XP Service Pack 3 fixes the problem too.

But the problem persists when an external drive is attached before the user logs on. The mapping of the network drives fails when their drive letter is in use. USBDLM fixes this when configured appropriate.

Read more and download USB Drive Letter Manager (USBDLM) here

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Written by Odd-Magne Kristoffersen. Read more great feeds at is source WEBSITE
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