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Author Topic: USB Ports Letter Assignments  (Read 5121 times)

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Offline Chim

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USB Ports Letter Assignments
« on: September 16, 2012, 03:18:38 PM »
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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Offline bob3160

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Re: USB Ports Letter Assignments
« Reply #1 on: September 16, 2012, 04:22:40 PM »
Maybe taking a look at Disk Management would help explain the assignment of F rather than E :



Remember that the auto assignment always picks the next available drive letter - unless you manually assign
or change it.

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Offline Chim

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Re: USB Ports Letter Assignments
« Reply #2 on: September 16, 2012, 04:51:44 PM »
How do I bring up Drive Management?
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Offline bob3160

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Re: USB Ports Letter Assignments
« Reply #3 on: September 16, 2012, 05:04:20 PM »
I simply did a search for Disk Mnagement
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Offline Chim

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Re: USB Ports Letter Assignments
« Reply #4 on: September 16, 2012, 05:59:45 PM »
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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Offline bob3160

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Re: USB Ports Letter Assignments
« Reply #5 on: September 16, 2012, 06:01:04 PM »
Quote from: Chim on September 16, 2012, 05:59:45 PM
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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Offline bob3160

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Re: USB Ports Letter Assignments
« Reply #6 on: September 16, 2012, 06:10:29 PM »
This should help get you to the right place:


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Offline DavidR

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Re: USB Ports Letter Assignments
« Reply #7 on: September 16, 2012, 06:36:24 PM »
Quote from: Chim on September 16, 2012, 05:59:45 PM
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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Offline Chim

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Re: USB Ports Letter Assignments
« Reply #8 on: September 17, 2012, 02:59:55 PM »
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.
« Last Edit: September 17, 2012, 03:02:53 PM by Chim »
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Offline DavidR

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Re: USB Ports Letter Assignments
« Reply #9 on: September 17, 2012, 03:02:15 PM »
Mystery to me too then.
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Offline Chim

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Re: USB Ports Letter Assignments
« Reply #10 on: September 17, 2012, 03:04:30 PM »
Thanks, David, Bob!
Bottom line, as long as the Flash Drives still function, that's what counts.
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