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Why does Windows assign my USB drive to an already assigned network drive?

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superboyac:
At work, whenever I put in a USB stick, the computer automatically assigns the USB the same letter as another networked drive.  Why does it do this?  Why doesn't it find another, unused letter?  I always have to disconnect the network drive to be able to see the USB.  And then, even after disconnecting, it reconnects after startup (which may not necessarily be a problem, just a way the network is setup).  How can I get the USB to be assigned to a different letter?

superboyac:
Found this.

MilesAhead:
I try to use a drive letter that's away from everything else for network shares.  That way if a few removable media come and go, I don't get the conflict.

Also I found a tutorial how to create a bootable USB and one thing interesting was using the DiskPart assign command to map a USB to another drive letter.  Can come in handy if you are using some old diskette utilities that only know about A:

It may avoid having to install one of those "virtual floppy" drivers used to get a boot image onto "A:" before copying to other media.

For some reason I can't seem to find that tutorial now.  It was good stuff though.

edit: here's the MS ref for DiskPart
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300415

tsaint:
I was also driven crazy by that problem, until I began using USB Drive Letter Manager, which runs as a service. From http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html.
Each of my USB drives and external hard drives has a specific letter I chose so as not to conflict with the network, nor each other (set in an ini file) which my computer will always use.

TucknDar:
I was also driven crazy by that problem, until I began using USB Drive Letter Manager, which runs as a service. From http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html.
Each of my USB drives and external hard drives has a specific letter I chose so as not to conflict with the network, nor each other (set in an ini file) which my computer will always use.

-tsaint (May 06, 2009, 12:57 AM)
--- End quote ---
Incredible utility! I use it for all my USB devices so I know that my iPod will get assigned to 'i' for instance and that the memory card from my camera also gets the same letter each time.

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