Perplexing sponataneous drive renaming
 

I recently installed a pair of Western Digital 750GB external drives to store my photos and to back up. The first drive installed was called G (not his real name) and the second drive was called M (also not his real name) The other day G spontaneously renamed itself K, thus obliterating several thousand pictures from Picasa. I named it G again, waited for Picasa to relocate all the pictures and it was fine. Until this morning when I opened Picasa, went to click on an image and all of a sudden all the thumbnails disappeared and it was because G drive was now K once again.

WTF?

I just changed it back again, making sure that no other drive (USB port) was assigned G. Picasa is doing its thing, we'll see how long this lasts

This is starting to sound like either Kafka, or Men in Black. Or both.

Windows is a pain about this kind of thing. Do you have some other drives hanging around? It seems odd for it to jump from G to M without the other stuff being taken up. Anyway, I'm not sure if this will stick, but you might try setting the drive letter manually. Right-click "My Computer", choose "Manage", and open "Disk Management" under "Storage". You can right-click volumes to reassign letters.

Yeah, that's how Ive been doing it. fingers crossed.

Have you other USB things you're plugging in intermittently? Things that could have been assigned those letters and they're claiming them when they return? I'm just guessing, btw.

Yes, but each time you plug or unplug Windows changes drive letters. You can stop this by assigning drive letters. I have a how-to on that, but it's 1:45am, I'm drinking and can't sleep and 26º. So stand by

Only thing I can find at this time is http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html.
I have something else. Later. bb

It's just a glitch in the Matrix. Pretend you didn't notice.

You again?

There's a way to assign a permanent drive letter to removeable drives but I'm too lazy to google it.

welcome back Beestie. You've been missed.

I fixed it, I think it stemmed from not renaming the other G drive. When I named the other G drive Z everything was ok. Silly me assuming that the computer would realize that if I wanted to assign G to a drive, it would have to come up with another letter for the existing G drive.

[keeping my day job]

The fix is a kludge. As previously noted, There's a way to assign a permanent name to a peripheral. I never learned it because there was no reason to. For example, a USB port device may have the name USB1:. Or it can be named as a device called Dove. When that drive connects, the OS sees it as a piece of hardware called DOVE (not G:).

The parts manager at Family Jeep is named "Cludge."




somehow, that's short for 'Clothilde'