I installed an external hard drive on one of my PC's so that we all (4 of us) can use it for our IPODs. My problem is that everytime my son inserts memory stick, it changes the target drive of the external drive. (started off as G, now it is H). This makes shortcuts impossible. Is it possible to fix the drive number (such as the A and C drive is now?) thanks! Dubya
You should be able to in Start/Control Panel/System/Hardware/Device Manager. You can also right click My Computer, then click the Hardware tab and select the device manager button. Select the device on the Device Manager list, right click, and select properties. Select a drive letter and range for the external drive (i.e. H:, range=H: to H.
Note, Mr. Engineer, that Mitchell chose "H" as the letter to which you should set the external drive, not "G". Clearly windows is bumping the external drive down to H whenever it sees the memory stick "drive" active, and it gives said memory stick "drive" letter "G". It does this, no doubt, because the memory stick drive is internal and connected to the DMA channel differently than would be an external drive using a DMA-channel-connected interface. Mitchell's solution is a sound and appropriate "don't try to fight whatever Windows is trying to do" sort of approach. Set the external drive to "H" as Mitchell advised, even though it could easily be "G" whenever the memory stick's not present. But, in addition, as long as you're setting drive letters, I'd insert a memory stick and set its "drive" to "G" in the same way, even if Windows doesn't see it at all when there's no memory stick inserted. By the way, there may be a configuration item in software, or a jumper or dipswitch on the memory stick "drive" hardware, that allows Windows to "see" the memory stick drive drive, even if no memory stick is inserted. If so, I'd set it that way before assigning drive letters. In fact, doing so would probably eliminate the need to hard-assign drive letters because Windows would always see the memory stick "drive" as "G" so that whether or not the external drive was plugged-in, it would always be seen as "H" whenever it is.
