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Force USB Drives to use Drive Letter X

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Stoic Joker:
Okay - 5 minute job...that's been going on for a few weeks now.

The tape drive died (they do that), and it was cheaper to buy 5 500GB USB drives than it would be to replace the tape drive. So... I got these 5 USB drives...And I need them to all be drive Z: when they're plugged in (one at a time of course) so that the backup software can find them consistantly...Without needing constant fiddling with.

Now here's the funny part. I've done this before. So I know it will work. I just can't remember how the :) I did it.

The obvious answer of using the disk management console, doesn't work. When the drives are swapped, the drive letter assignment goes missing. Now. IIRC...(Ha!)...There was a registry hack - may have been cmd or vbs scripted - that resulted in all drives happily using the same drive letter (when~attached~one~at~a~time...). I just can't bloody find the friggin thing (again), and apparently I forgot to save it back when.

All I can find now is a constant stream of TS drones regurgitating the (wrong) use DMC answer.


Ring any bells anybody?

cranioscopical:
As a stop-gap measure, USB Safely Remove or Zentimo.

TucknDar:
My favourite tool for this is USB Drive Letter Manager - http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html
What it is
USBDLM is a Windows service that gives control over Window's drive letter assignment for USB drives. Running as service makes it independent of the logged on user's privileges, so there is no need to give the users the privilege to change drive letters.
It automatically solves conflicts between USB drives and network or subst drives of the currently logged on user.
Furthermore you can define new default letters for USB drives and much more.

USBDLM is Freeware for private and educational (schools, colleges, universities) use only.
--- End quote ---

Stoic Joker:
 :wallbash:

Okay, let me clarify... This is for a Headless production Domain Controller ... Shenanigan software is not an acceptable solution.

"Safe Removal" is irrelevant as caching is disabled on these drives (e.g. Hot-Plugging is O-Tay)
.
There is a correct way of doing this, which involves a registry edit...Which I've used before...I just can't remember the damn thing. And was hoping somebody here did.

Shades:
This link has a lot of tips and code that is supposed to accomplish the task you have in mind.

The link above also mentions the use of the SUBST command, which might be a solution for you as well.

Found one link more regarding: 'Reassigning drive letters automatically'.

Hope it helps.

***EDIT***
This link discusses a useful trick making use of standard Windows functionality.

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