SOLVED: Assign disk letter or path?

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The Maillard Reaction
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2012/07/19 07:01:12 (permalink)

SOLVED: Assign disk letter or path?



edit to add: I did the assign letter name procedure and now when I place the drive on the system it gets recognized with a letter, and the letter is automatically assigned to the next letter if I have something else in place.

I don't remember having to ever do that before.

It seemed counter intuitive to use an assign letter dialog to get automatic assignment to work...  I'm glad to have it working.


I'm afraid I may be having a senior moment.

I just took delivery of 2 TB drives which I mounted in external enclosures.

My Win7 laptop loaded the ESATA drivers and saw the connection.

I used Disk Management to initialize with MBR and I formatted both drives overnight.

When I was prompted to select a drive letter I declined as I hoped that Windows would automatically assign the next available letter instead.

I've purposefully assigned drive letters to things but mainly CD or DVD drives that I want to remain fixed as "Z" or something like that.


My question; Windows explorer doesn't see the drives. Windows disk management does and I have the drive set as active with the whole thing being a primary partition.


Is my memory flaky? Do I have to assign a drive letter even if I intend to pull this, and the other drive off the system when it is not in use?

I'm confused.


Thanks for any help you can offer.


best regards,
mike
post edited by mike_mccue - 2012/07/19 07:46:02


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    slartabartfast
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    Re:SOLVED: Assign disk letter or path? 2012/07/19 12:28:47 (permalink)
    As I recall, since around windows 2000, the OS registers the drives that it can access. By recording the partition serial number (the windows serial number assigned during formatting not the manufacturer's serial number on the drive) and linking it to an assigned drive letter, Windows can subsequently match that particular drive/partition to the drive letter. In that way a drive/partition can be taken off line or physically removed then reattached and come up with the same drive letter--a very useful property for a variety of applications. The ritual of assigning a drive letter registers the drive as being one that Explorer should see as being installed on Windows, as well as assigning the letter. While it is not necessary to assign a letter (windows can automatically assign a letter), it is necessary to validate that the drive belongs to this windows installation before it can be seen in Explorer.

    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/330140



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