CHANGE OF DRIVE LETTERS
I have two external HDDs attached to the laptop via usb hub, both having three partitions used for various purposes. When one is removed and reattached the drive letters change. One of the partitions is reserved for NSB and one for periodic backups while others have different purposes. In the Acronis 2013 start screen listing the backups already made show the old drive letter which has now changed. Can you please help me achieve a drive letter which will not change despite how many times the drive is removed/reattached? Also is it possible to change the drive letters of existing backups. NSB drive letter can be changed using settings-am I correct?
Look forward to helpful response.
Thanks you.
To get a drive letter to stick to a particular drive, attach the drive, then go into Windows Disk Management and assign a drive letter by right clicking on the drive. What this actually does is link the drive ID to a USB port, so so long as you don't attach the drive to a different USB port the drive letter will be constant.
What this actually does is link the drive ID to a USB port, so so long as you don't attach the drive to a different USB port the drive letter will be constant.
Really? External drives that I've relettered appear to keep that letter even when connected to other USB ports for the first time.
Most of the time as you say, it works, occassionally if you attach more than one external drive to different USB ports Windows will reallocate the drive letters, the way to prevent this is to attempt to use the same port for the drive.
Thanks a lot for very helful advice. Once these letters are changed how can I change the drive letters for the existing backups appearing the Acronis backup screen. Please refer to the enclosed screen capture.
It would be better to create new tasks pointing to the new drive letters.
For my own use, I personally have several external hard drives which I use for backup storage. Each of these drives have their own drive letter (x-y-z) and their own individual volume name. My personal preference is to include the drive letter as part of volume name.
For example, one of my external disk which is 640GB in size and has letter X assigned as the drive letter. These are the names I have assigned but any name is acceptable if it properly identifies one disk from another. Sample names I have assigned to these disks is
X-640
Y-750
Z-1500
If your drive C has no name, if Win7, consider assigning
Win7-C
or
XP_Pro-C
Most restores will be done when booted from the TI Recovery CD. The TI Linux Recovery CD will assign NORMAL drive letters--NOT the x or y or z letters. Thus it is very important that you have names assigned to these external drives and drive C so that you can identify these items by their descriptions while totally ignoring the wrong drive letter assigned by the program.
As Tuttle has indicated, your best chance of success will be if you create new backup tasks and point the new tasks to empty storage sub-folders. It IS possible to edit your existing tasks but the results may not be what you expect and definitely will require that you manually located the older backups. My recommendation agrees with Tuttle, do not edit your existing tasks but create new replacement tasks.
If possible, the use of USB-HUB should be avoided but I have not had any issues their their usage (7 port Belkin) . Should you have difficulty with validation, I would cease to use the hub and plug direct.