USB drive letter management

[Malcolm Bull]

I want a way in which I can assign a specific drive letter to a USB memory stick, rather than rely on the Windows next-in-sequence method.

I considered using the DOS SUBST utility, but this is rather cumbersome.  It would be nice to know that immediately I insert a specific USB, it will be accessible as, say, Drive Q:

I see that there are several pieces of software available to manage this task.  Does anyone have experience of using these?

[matthewj64]

This can be done using Disk Management in Windows, see here:
https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000038.htm

M

[mike175]

Described very clearly here:

https://www.howtogeek.com/96298/assign-a-static-drive-letter-to-a-usb-drive-in-windows-7/

Thanks for raising this, it's something I always intended to find out but never got around to 

[Malcolm Bull]

Thanks to you both.  They both produce the same results, exactly what I wanted/needed.

Best wishes and thanks again

Malcolm Bull

[Billyblue]

Without looking at the websites given -

Why not just name your USB sticks and then it doesn't matter which slot you put them into.

Besides, Windows seems to name slots arbitrarily.  One I use a lot was slot E, and over the last couple of weeks it's become slot G.  And no, I haven't changed or added anything else, it's still the same slot    But the name of my USB stays the same even if it doesn't know what slot it's in     

Dawn M

[ReadyDale]

Without looking at the websites given -

Why not just name your USB sticks and then it doesn't matter which slot you put them into.

Besides, Windows seems to name slots arbitrarily.  One I use a lot was slot E, and over the last couple of weeks it's become slot G.  And no, I haven't changed or added anything else, it's still the same slot    But the name of my USB stays the same even if it doesn't know what slot it's in     

Dawn M

It DOES matter if you want to link to a file on the stick, or run a process that accesses a file on the stick, etc.
The methods being discussed will fix the stick to a drive letter, so that in the circumstances mentioned, the stick will be a consistent letter.

[Malcolm Bull]

Yes, Dawn, it does matter!

If you want to refer to a USB stick in a shortcut or a command such as

F:\filename

then you do need to know the drive letter, because the name you give to the USB is absolutely useless in this context