Windows 10 // Drive Letter Question
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I take a brand new thumb drive out of the package I'll call this one the Orange Thumb Drive I insert the Orange Thumb Drive into the USB jack Windows reports that The Orange Thumb Drive is Drive "E:" (no quotes) I remove The Orange Thumb Drive I place a different thumb drive into that same USB Jack. I'll call this one The Purple Thumb Drive Windows reports that The Purple Thumb Drive is also Drive "E:" (no quotes) While the Purple Drive is still in place, I plug The Orange Thumb Drive into another USB Jack. Windows reports that The Orange Thumb Drive is now Drive "F:" (no quotes) This makes sense I unplug both Thumb Drives I now plug The Orange Thumb Drive back into the original USB Jack. Expected behavior: Windows will assign him "E:" Observed behavior: Windows continues to assign him "F:" Huh ? Brain assistance welcome and invited (Is there a better place to ask this question ?)
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I take a brand new thumb drive out of the package I'll call this one the Orange Thumb Drive I insert the Orange Thumb Drive into the USB jack Windows reports that The Orange Thumb Drive is Drive "E:" (no quotes) I remove The Orange Thumb Drive I place a different thumb drive into that same USB Jack. I'll call this one The Purple Thumb Drive Windows reports that The Purple Thumb Drive is also Drive "E:" (no quotes) While the Purple Drive is still in place, I plug The Orange Thumb Drive into another USB Jack. Windows reports that The Orange Thumb Drive is now Drive "F:" (no quotes) This makes sense I unplug both Thumb Drives I now plug The Orange Thumb Drive back into the original USB Jack. Expected behavior: Windows will assign him "E:" Observed behavior: Windows continues to assign him "F:" Huh ? Brain assistance welcome and invited (Is there a better place to ask this question ?)
It assigned the drive letter the device last used.
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Dave Kreskowiak -
I take a brand new thumb drive out of the package I'll call this one the Orange Thumb Drive I insert the Orange Thumb Drive into the USB jack Windows reports that The Orange Thumb Drive is Drive "E:" (no quotes) I remove The Orange Thumb Drive I place a different thumb drive into that same USB Jack. I'll call this one The Purple Thumb Drive Windows reports that The Purple Thumb Drive is also Drive "E:" (no quotes) While the Purple Drive is still in place, I plug The Orange Thumb Drive into another USB Jack. Windows reports that The Orange Thumb Drive is now Drive "F:" (no quotes) This makes sense I unplug both Thumb Drives I now plug The Orange Thumb Drive back into the original USB Jack. Expected behavior: Windows will assign him "E:" Observed behavior: Windows continues to assign him "F:" Huh ? Brain assistance welcome and invited (Is there a better place to ask this question ?)
--edit Deleted; this is not even a programming questions, this is for admins to sort out. If it were a programming question, it would not be welcome in the Lounge.
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: "If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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I take a brand new thumb drive out of the package I'll call this one the Orange Thumb Drive I insert the Orange Thumb Drive into the USB jack Windows reports that The Orange Thumb Drive is Drive "E:" (no quotes) I remove The Orange Thumb Drive I place a different thumb drive into that same USB Jack. I'll call this one The Purple Thumb Drive Windows reports that The Purple Thumb Drive is also Drive "E:" (no quotes) While the Purple Drive is still in place, I plug The Orange Thumb Drive into another USB Jack. Windows reports that The Orange Thumb Drive is now Drive "F:" (no quotes) This makes sense I unplug both Thumb Drives I now plug The Orange Thumb Drive back into the original USB Jack. Expected behavior: Windows will assign him "E:" Observed behavior: Windows continues to assign him "F:" Huh ? Brain assistance welcome and invited (Is there a better place to ask this question ?)
Windows has this thing where it assigns a drive letter to a volume. If you repartition it, you'll see what I mean. So, my guess is that E was the first available drive latter to use when it first assigned one to the volume since A, B, and D are reserved-ish; D still being the old CD-ROM drive by default. When you inserted them individually, they both were assigned E because E wasn't being used both times and all is well. But when E was taken by inserting two at once, the second one was reassigned F. When you removed both and stuck in the one that got re-assigned, F wasn't being used with no other devices so Windows just kept on using it and never re-assigned it again to "reset" it. The thing to remember is, it's actually a property of the volume itself. One of the less intuitive things Windows does, but at least you can center your icons on the task bar now. :laugh:
Jeremy Falcon
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Windows has this thing where it assigns a drive letter to a volume. If you repartition it, you'll see what I mean. So, my guess is that E was the first available drive latter to use when it first assigned one to the volume since A, B, and D are reserved-ish; D still being the old CD-ROM drive by default. When you inserted them individually, they both were assigned E because E wasn't being used both times and all is well. But when E was taken by inserting two at once, the second one was reassigned F. When you removed both and stuck in the one that got re-assigned, F wasn't being used with no other devices so Windows just kept on using it and never re-assigned it again to "reset" it. The thing to remember is, it's actually a property of the volume itself. One of the less intuitive things Windows does, but at least you can center your icons on the task bar now. :laugh:
Jeremy Falcon
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I take a brand new thumb drive out of the package I'll call this one the Orange Thumb Drive I insert the Orange Thumb Drive into the USB jack Windows reports that The Orange Thumb Drive is Drive "E:" (no quotes) I remove The Orange Thumb Drive I place a different thumb drive into that same USB Jack. I'll call this one The Purple Thumb Drive Windows reports that The Purple Thumb Drive is also Drive "E:" (no quotes) While the Purple Drive is still in place, I plug The Orange Thumb Drive into another USB Jack. Windows reports that The Orange Thumb Drive is now Drive "F:" (no quotes) This makes sense I unplug both Thumb Drives I now plug The Orange Thumb Drive back into the original USB Jack. Expected behavior: Windows will assign him "E:" Observed behavior: Windows continues to assign him "F:" Huh ? Brain assistance welcome and invited (Is there a better place to ask this question ?)
Nothing new here. Windows has worked that way at least since Windows supported USB drives (NT SP6? XP?) Windows assigns a "default drive letter" to every device the first time it sees it. It will use that letter whenever the device is inserted again. If the default drive letter is used by another device, Windows will reassign the "default drive letter".
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
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Windows has this thing where it assigns a drive letter to a volume. If you repartition it, you'll see what I mean. So, my guess is that E was the first available drive latter to use when it first assigned one to the volume since A, B, and D are reserved-ish; D still being the old CD-ROM drive by default. When you inserted them individually, they both were assigned E because E wasn't being used both times and all is well. But when E was taken by inserting two at once, the second one was reassigned F. When you removed both and stuck in the one that got re-assigned, F wasn't being used with no other devices so Windows just kept on using it and never re-assigned it again to "reset" it. The thing to remember is, it's actually a property of the volume itself. One of the less intuitive things Windows does, but at least you can center your icons on the task bar now. :laugh:
Jeremy Falcon
I have been attempting to understand this a little more with the "Disk Management" program (i.e., [Windows_Key]+"X", then "K") Wo; pretty cool stuff. So then, I can remove the drive letter, and I barely understand what I'm looking at; which I will live with for the moment. More experimentation shows that I can change that Drive Letter Name, and that I have twenty four options... - A-Thru-Z, - but - "C" and "D" are already taken ...which makes sense So, I tried "A" Ta-Da, Windows Command Prompt sees "A:" Duh Have I just created the world's first Sixteen Gigabyte Floppy Drive ???
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Nothing new here. Windows has worked that way at least since Windows supported USB drives (NT SP6? XP?) Windows assigns a "default drive letter" to every device the first time it sees it. It will use that letter whenever the device is inserted again. If the default drive letter is used by another device, Windows will reassign the "default drive letter".
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
That's as good an answer as I've ever seen. I won't claim I've verified it, but it absolutely sounds plausible. I have a batch file PowerShell script that backs up folders to a USB stick, and I gave up a long time ago trying to identify it through a predictable drive letter. The script instead uses a combination of known serial number + volume label in its attempt to positively, correctly identify the drive.
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I have been attempting to understand this a little more with the "Disk Management" program (i.e., [Windows_Key]+"X", then "K") Wo; pretty cool stuff. So then, I can remove the drive letter, and I barely understand what I'm looking at; which I will live with for the moment. More experimentation shows that I can change that Drive Letter Name, and that I have twenty four options... - A-Thru-Z, - but - "C" and "D" are already taken ...which makes sense So, I tried "A" Ta-Da, Windows Command Prompt sees "A:" Duh Have I just created the world's first Sixteen Gigabyte Floppy Drive ???
Yeah, I'm pretty sure A and B are 100% ok to be used these days. C for your system drive is just a convention more than a hard rule. A and B were originally for insertable media like floppy disks, since they were around before internal storage. C was just next in line when HDDs came out, and of course optical drives just picked the next one: D. Just a convention though. If you had two hard drives for instance *before* installing a CD-ROM drive, then Windows would call the CD-ROM drive E because D was already assigned to a volume. Removing the second hard drive wouldn't change the E mapping since it's already set to the volume.
Jeremy Falcon