Why has my external drive changed its Location?

Question

Before when i plugged in my external drive it used to be located as the f: drive. All my files extension now no longer work as the drive has changed to G: this happened over night. I have no idea why. I dont run any programs like daemon tools or anything.

Can anyone help

It doesnt matter if i change all the usb ports, there is no registered program or function using the f: drive

Answer 1

You can forcibly change the drive's letter back to F: with the computer manager. Either right-click My Computer and select Manage, or look in the start menu for Administrative Tools > Computer Management.
Once you've opened the Management console, select "Disk Management from under the Storage tree, find your external drive in the list at the bottom or top of the console, right-click on the drive letter you want to change, and select "Change Drive Letter and Paths"
From that window, select the letter of the drive you want to change, click "Change", choose "Assign the following drive letter:" and select "F:" and press OK


This should work, assuming no drives have taken the F: letter, and assuming you have windows XP Professional. Otherwise you may have to use Partition Magic, or the command prompt to change the letter...

Answer 2

as another answer has mentioned if you add another peice of hardware,especially a optical drive or anything that will be visible in "my computer",then the drive letter will change,however since you havent added anything this cannot be the cause
"my computer" is the heart of the windows file system,this is the start point for any browses we do looking for a certain file
certain software installations can change the drive letter or sometimes even the drive icon,for example i installed a demo for "need for speed carbon" and installed it using the defualt settings,when i restarted my computer ,i was amazed to see the c drive had a icon of "nfs carbon" and not the normal icon picture of a disk drive
simply by uninstalling the demo and reinstalling it into a specific folder resolved the problem
think what applications or software you installed last night,and check to see if they were responsible by uninstalling them and checking the drive letter for the external drive
i personally think windows can be a easy o/s to understand,you just have to think logically about problems,such as "if a problem occured an hour ago,what was i doing at that moment,the answer will be there"
another option would be to remove the drive safely,then restart the computer,then once windows has finished loading,plug the drive back in,it may re-assign its drive letter
i hope this helps
good luck mate!

Answer 3

You've installed a new piece of hardware or software that uses Drive F:.

Your external drive always uses the first unused drive letter.

Open My Computer to find out what is using drive F:.

Answer 4

Have you either added another component (ie dig camers or flash card mem) or have you switched the usb port you were using for another? I would start there.

Answer 5

Did you plug it in another USB port! - have you added another device?