How to get Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit to always show the same HDD letters for individual drives

[MSwhip]

I have an issue with HDD letters being changed by the operating system. It is highly bothersome that I cant keep each volume letter unchanged so I can identify each one of my 6 hard drives + the Usb drives.
I always keep 2 HDD inside the PC tower plus another 4 inside an external enclosure. Additionally I have an external Sabrent USB-DSC5 Hard Drive adapter with one HDD or Optical drive connected to it and the PC.

Is it possible from Windows 7 to set it in such a way that the drives lettering e.g. C E F G H J K** etc etc remain linked to each individual HDD?

If Windows does not offer that capability how do I solve this need? Is there any known software I could install that deals with this issue and solves it efficiently?

All help would be appreciated.

Thank you kindly

 

[Slaymate]

You need to give use more info. I have 5 hard drives, 2 Optical drives and a bunch of flash drives and they always keep the same drive letter.

 

[KSoD]

Hard Drive letters don't exist. They are arbitrary letters assigned by Windows for ease of use access for the User. Before Windows loads they only have the UID to identify them. So no there is no way to force Windows to assign the same letter to external devices every time you boot. Cause the UID changes on those devices. You will have to name them, then go into Disk Management and change to the drive letter you want on each boot.

 

[Thomas]

Mak is right on this. Not sure, but Slaymate must have read the post wrong. There is NO way to get usb flash drives to always assume the same (letter). As you insert them one at a time they will be labeled A-B-C-D in alphabetical order. Again there is no way to get multiple usb flash drives to retain their (letter). They are labeled in alphabetical order as you insert them. Installed hard drives however should retain their path as long as they are not moved around between controllers.

 

[Arduwyn]

I was curious so I tested this out. I have 3 Flash drives and an external drive set up. I went to disk management and changed the drive letters to random letters. Rebooted and they are all the same. I unpluged them and hooked them to another computer... they went to the arbitrary a,b,d,e,f scheme.

I did this with windows 7 sp1... none of the driver letters ever reverted even after unplugging the drives and rebooting. the system remembers everything. It only changed when moving the drives to another system.

 

[KSoD]

Drive letters are nothing. Boot into a Linux LiveCD that will show you enough proof that there is no such thing as drive letters. They use sda/sdb/sdc/sd.....and so on. Boot using Gparted and you will see the same thing. The only reason why you see a name or anything associated with the drive is cause Windows assigns it. Not cause it existed previously. Windows does not retain such information with its BCD boot loader. Download EasyBCD and take a look at the details and it will show you that the only thing that Windows uses upon boot is the location of the winload.exe file in the system32 folder. Nothing else exists.

 

[Arduwyn]

yes, I know... The only point in driver letters is for identification. I was just pointing out that you can change and retain the letter you see in my computer. I am very familiar with Linux; I have been using it for years. Dual boot of mint and 7 now.

 

[Slaymate]

Not sure, but Slaymate must have read the post wrong. There is NO way to get usb flash drives to always assume the same (letter).

I read the post correctly, my flash drives as well as all my other drives are alway assigned the same drve letter, on my pc. If I plug a drive into a different pc it is assigned a new drive letter for that pc but the next time I use it, in the second pc, it uses the same assigned drive letter again. I do always use the same port for each device, as in, flash drive#1 is always plugged into usb port#1 and flash drive#2 is always plugged into usb port#2, etc. But in the end the same drive letter is always assigned.

 

[MindoverMaster]

Well, yeah, because it assigns that letter to a certain serial number.