Reallocating Windows drive letters

Ed Bott, of TechRepublic, has come up with a timely and relevant post, yet again.

Ed reminds us that, although Windows automagically assigns a drive letter to any connected drive, we can change what drive letter is associated with our particular external plug ins.

While we can't use the C: drive, and it is usually considered foolish to use either the A: or B: drives (they have usually been allocated to "floppy drives and can confuse older software". Best avoid those ones, then).

Ed suggests however that we "might want to assign M to [...]our digital music files, [...] or X for your top-secret X-Files." Good ideas to help our full memories.

He explains how to set the drive letter:

• "Start by ensuring that the drive you want to work with isn't in use and that no files from that drive are open".
• "Next, open the Disk Management console (Diskmgmt.msc) and right-click the volume that has the drive letter you want to change".
• "Click Change Drive Letter And Paths and then click the Change button, where you can choose from a list of available drives".

So easy.


Sam

• Reference: Bott, Ed (1 February 2017). Windows tip of the week: How to change a drive letter. Retrieved 2 February 2017 from http://enews.techrepublic.com/hostedemail/email.htm?CID=41591294381&ch=8F8A95B34DEB472A730A759B9028928C&h=c9695ac18a6a115a9d40ab19d7f70759&ei=WolkDVlxN&schema=echo3

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How do I check my external Hard Drive?

There is nothing worse than having an external hard drive which has problems.

I transfer all of my NMIT files back and forth using a memory stick (thumb drive). Every now and again there seems to be a problem on the memory stick which needs some kind of recovery treatment.

It is very easy to run a CHKDSK function on a PC, but it is slightly more complicated to run this on an external hard drive. So I thought I would show you how to do it.

Go to the Windows start button, and in the search programs box, enter the command prompt:

cmd

This will open the administrators DOS box (ha ha, just when you thought you'd left DOS behind forever).

Regardless of what place in your PC hard drive directory this has taken you to, enter:

chkdsk /f X:

...but replace the "X" with the letter of your external hard drive.

The search will run, and repair any errors.

So easy when you know how!


Sam

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