Avast WEBforum
Other => General Topics => Topic started by: Chim on September 16, 2012, 03:18:38 PM
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How do the Drive Letters get assigned for USB Ports?
I have an HP Pavilion 6730 computer. It has only 2 USB Ports. I use one for my Mouse. That leaves me only one free USB Port, which I always use for my Flash Drive.
Now ... my Flash Drive has always shown up as Drive E:
Well, two days ago, I performed some Computer Maintenance. I reinstalled avast, Opera, Foxit Reader, IrfanView, MBAM and YouTube Downloader. I then did the CCleaner, Glary Utilities, JetClean thing as I always do after reinstalls. I then performed a Hard Drive Defrag with Puran Defrag.
Afterwards, the Desktop Shortcut for bringing up my PortableApps.com GUI did not want to work. I was fixing to redo the Shortcut when I noticed that now my Flash Drive was showing up as Drive F: After redoing the Shortcut to reflect the new Drive F: Designation of my Flash Drive, everything is of course Cool.
Why did the Drive Designation of my Flash Drive change from Drive E: to Drive F: when I'm still using the exact same USB Port location that I have always used before and that it always gave me a Drive E: Designation?
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Maybe taking a look at Disk Management would help explain the assignment of F rather than E :
(http://my.jetscreenshot.com/2701/m_20120916-j4s1-85kb.jpg) (http://my.jetscreenshot.com/2701/20120916-j4s1-85kb)
Remember that the auto assignment always picks the next available drive letter - unless you manually assign
or change it.
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How do I bring up Drive Management?
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I simply did a search for Disk Mnagement
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Oh, I thought you were referring to something in the Control Panel or something like that.
Well, I'll see if I can find anything because I certainly didn't assign it to Drive F:
Bottom line, it works fine. I was just curious as to why it happened after all this time.
Thanks, Bob!
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Oh, I thought you were referring to something in the Control Panel or something like that.
Well, I'll see if I can find anything because I certainly didn't assign it to Drive F:
Bottom line, it works fine. I was just curious as to why it happened after all this time.
Thanks, Bob!
It is in the control panel. The search the Windows Search.
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This should help get you to the right place:
(http://my.jetscreenshot.com/2701/m_20120916-j9th-132kb.jpg) (http://my.jetscreenshot.com/2701/20120916-j9th-132kb)
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Oh, I thought you were referring to something in the Control Panel or something like that.
Well, I'll see if I can find anything because I certainly didn't assign it to Drive F:
<snip>
Do you happen to have any peripherals attached to the computer that might have a USB connection as that may well be being detected and assigned a drive letter.
If I have my Epson printer switched on, it has a multi card reader slot and that gets allocated a drive letter (see images), if I subsequently plug in a USB stick that gets the next one in order.
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Nope, David. As I had previously mentioned, my computer has only 2 USB Ports.
One is always used by my Mouse.
And in the other one I always have my Flash Drive plugged in.
So, no other peripheral connected that wasn't connected before.
In hindsight, the only thing that I can think MIGHT have somehow factored in this mysterious Flash Drive Designation change is:
After that computer maintenance that I had performed with the Apps Reinstalls ... CCleaner, Glary Utilities & JetClean cleaning and the Defrag with Puran Defrag ... I swapped out my usual 16 Gig Flash Drive with my new 8 Gig Flash Drive because that's where I happened to have the avast Virus Definitions Update that I had downloaded at my sister's house.
I don't think I had ever used this 8 Gig Flash Drive on my computer.
Nevertheless, upon inserting it, it stated "New Hardware Found." Then as expected, it worked fine after that.
I don't know if for some reason, something happened during that swap between my 16 Gig Flash Drive to my 8 Gig Flash Drive.
They're both the new Cruzer type Flash Drives. So I don't know why that should have had anything to do with changing the Flash Drive Designation from E: to now F:
BTW ... I did properly stop the functioning of my 16 Gig Flash Drive before removing it to insert my 8 Gig Flash Drive.
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Mystery to me too then.
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Thanks, David, Bob!
Bottom line, as long as the Flash Drives still function, that's what counts.