Please help with my external hard drive!!

T

tbanning

New Member
Hi there,

The background
I have an external hard drive, which connects via USB to my PC.

I have a large number of .WAV files saved to this drive, and I use Windows media player to play the music. I have playlists etc setup in media player.

The external drive is usually turned off, and only switched on every few days when I want music. The cable is always in the same usb slot on my PC.

The problem
The drive shows up as a different location each time I turn it on. weeks ago it was consisently showing as the "J" Drive. As such, all the playlists have file paths to the J drive. For the last few days, the external drive has been recognised as being the "K" Drive. Mediaa player is still looking for the J drive so it won't play the music! very frustrating..

any ideas?? Ideally I want to set the PC to always put this external drive in J or K, but it needs to be constant..

I really appreciate any help anyone may be able to give :)
 
Three questions...

1. What operating system are you running?

2. Do you have any other USB devices (flash drive, camera, ext...) plugged in when you are turning your external hard drive back on? Because sometimes that will change the drive letter.

3. Why don't you just leave your hard drive on?
 
1. XP

2. I do have other devices, but i've tried removing them all or plugging them all in (basically the PC seems to pick a drive at random and then stick with it for a few weeks)

3. I don't know - I thought it was bad to leave it on forever and ever when it only gets used once a week...?
 
Go into Control Panel-->Administrative Tools-->Computer Management-->Storage-->Disk Management.

Right click on the drive and select "Change Drive Letter and Paths"

See if the problem still occurs.
 
bobneedshelp54 said:
Go into Control Panel-->Administrative Tools-->Computer Management-->Storage-->Disk Management.

Right click on the drive and select "Change Drive Letter and Paths"

See if the problem still occurs.
Click to expand...
Yep, he's got it..

And leaving your hard drive shouldn't hurt, I do it all the time.
 
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