Running out of unique drive letters.

[roundup]

Hi

Over the years I've collected quite a few external hard drives. So many in fact that I'm now wondering how to Index new drives with Everything when I run out of Windows assigned drive letters. Maybe there's something in the options of Everything that I've overlooked, or more likely not understood. I've done a search about the subject but all I can find is information about mounting drives/removing drive letters etc., which I have found very confusing.

I'd like to continue using Everything, but what do I do when I reach the drive letter limit? How can I index new drives without them having the same drive letter as a drive I've already indexed, and ending up not knowing which drive to connect to the computer to access a specific file I've been looking for.

Put simply, I wish perform searches with Everything such that each file I find has a unique path so I can know exactly on which drive the file is located.

If there is a solution, could someone please give me, or point me to, a step by step guide.

Thank you.

[raccoon]

With NTFS formatted volumes, you can specify any real existing directory as a mount point on another drive, such as C:. When the drive is plugged in and the volume is mounted, that directory becomes the drive volume and is populated with its contents virtually. This is called a "mount point" and it's a form of NTFS junction.

You can change a volume from a drive letter to a mount point in Microsoft Window's "Change Drive Letter" option under Disk Management.

Press WinKey+R and type diskmgmt.msc and hit Enter.

Example of accomplishing this; Create a folder on C:\ called Mount, and then inside C:\Mount\ create the folders Media2014 and Media2015 and Media2016 each of which will constitute a different drive (volume) that formerly utilized a drive letter. Change Drive Letter to C:\Mount\Media2014\ instead of the drive letter W:. Now you'll be able to access the file C:\Mount\Media2014\Music\butterfly.mp3 instead of W:\Music\butterfly.mp3

Another option is to buy a 14 or 16 terabyte harddrive and slop 20 of your teeny tiny harddrives onto it.

[roundup]

Hi raccoon

Thank you for your help. I'll give it a try.

My latest portable drive is exFAT formatted. I guess I'll have to backup files I've already copied to it then re-format it as NTFS.

Cheers.

[ChrisGreaves]

Thank you for your help. I'll give it a try.

Hi Roundup. I have been using Racoon's tip for about 25 years. I have attached a batch file that runs at boot-up time.
You will see how I make a folder on my data drive T: map to the drive letter "V"

Code: Select all

subst V: T:\Pers\Places\LivingInBonavista

However this sort of technique merely consumes drive letters whereas I think your problem is that you are reaching the 26-letter limit.

Even if you buy a 20 TB drive, you still face the problem of 26 letters.

An alternate solution for some of your data might be transient drive letters, although I suspect this won't help you in Everything.

Suppose that one of your 20+ drives is a monthly run - payroll, accounting, inventory etc.
I conceive a DOS batch file that runs that task, and the batch files first task is to assign a drive letter to a folder, and the batch file's last task is to de-assign that drive letter, freeing that drive letter for another task.

Of course, I may have mis-understood your problem.
Cheers, Chris

[roundup]

Hi ChrisGreaves

Thank you for your reply.

I haven't had a chance to try raccoon's suggestion yet but it seems simple enough so I feel it will do the job. I require this solution for home use, not business. I actually prefer smaller drives because if they fail it's no great loss expense wise. I place new files (mostly video files) on one external drive then backup them up to a 2nd external drive. If a drive fails I've still got the other backup drive. Some of my drives are quite old powered 2TB drives, acquired before portable drives became popular and well priced. They've been sitting in draws for several years so I hope they still work.

Thanks.

[ChrisGreaves]

Hello roundup. I appear to have not fully understand your problem "but what do I do when I reach the drive letter limit?" as stated in your first post of this Topic.
I understood that you were planning a situation that could be stated as "One fixed boot drive in the computer (drive C:) and twenty-five external drives (A, B, D-Z) which would consume 26 drive letters".
My limited understanding of Everything is that Everything could handle 26 unique drives quite well.

Your problem arises when you bring in your 27th external drive, with no letter available to distinguish it from the other drives.

Raccoon's suggestion seems to me to be "assign a distinct drive letter to each external drive' (which in your case equates to "assign a distinct drive letter to each [monthly] application") Raccoon suggests doing this through Windows; my solution is the same, except I do it using a DOS command "SUBST" (Raccoon is more modern than am I!)

If you want to hook 25 external drives all at once to a computer system, well and good, but if you do run out of letters, that is, the 27th drive arrives, then two drives will have to share one letter.

My suggestion - a batch file for each of your 26 monthly applications - works because it takes care of mounting the external drive AND confirming that the correct drive is mounted before continuing.

Think of it as checking the magnetic label on a reel of tape. You ought to have unique labels for your removable disk drives.

... several years so I hope they still work.

I hate to sound pompous, but "Best of luck with this, mate!". The more anything is moved, plugged in, or turned off/on, the more we can be certain that it will fail today - not in the future. Campbell's law states that "85% of the time, it's the cable!"

Your home-based system data is important to you, otherwise you would not be posting here.

Why not take care of your data?

Calculate the size of your current batch of external data (not "drives"), double that figure, and buy two new drives of that capacity. No more physically sliding drives around in drawers, weakening cables and USB slots, increasing the risk of data loss.
Nightly backups are fast (RoboCopy from MSWindows)?

As I said, I may have misunderstood your original post, in which case please correct me. I tried multiple drives back in the early 1990s. It was not a success.

Cheers, Chris

[meteorquake]

On a side point, I wouldn't leave drives unused in a draw, they degrade in my experience (demagnetising).
I'm no expert on these things but what I do with unplugged drives is run a program periodically that rewrites the data, remagnetising it. There are special programs to do that (e.g. DiskFresh) although a simple loop of all the files copying to a new name and replacing the old with it should also suffice.
As to using larger drives rather than smaller ones, I do find the older drives of 250-500 GB store data with more resilience than modern high-capacity drives, I guess because they would have bigger magnetic areas per unit data, and they can be got for pennies so to speak and so are cheaper.
Also avoid temperature fluctuations and getting too cold, condensation can form inside hard drives and running should be at 25+C I've always understood
d

[NotNull]

There might be another solution when the disks are just in the drawer and contain more or less static data: using File Lists.

File listrs can be added to the Everything database (details are in the link above) and when given a descriptive name (e.g. Backup laptop.efu), finding out which disk they are on is easy when adding the File List Filename column (it will show Backup laptop.efu).

I would like to suggest USB Drive Letter Manager for Windows to keep the drive letters the same when re-attaching a disk.

Your problem arises when you bring in your 27th external drive, with no letter available to distinguish it from the other drives.

Fun fact:
When using SUBST, you are not limited to 26 drives
Drives like @:\ and ~:\ are possible too:

Code: Select all

C:\Users\me>subst ~: %USERPROFILE%

C:\Users\me>dir /b  ~:\desktop
2023-01-14 20_41_22-x - Everything (1.5a) 1.5.0.1332a (x64).png
____

These drives are not supported in File Explorer, but an old-skool filemanager like Total Commander does support them.
(Not in the drive list but in the address bar or by usiing command cd ~: )

But this doesn't help @roundup in any way ..)

[ChrisGreaves]

File lists can be added to the Everything database (details are in the link above)

Thanks for this NotNull. yet anothger area of Everything I have not explored, Sigh!

I would like to suggest USB Drive Letter Manager for Windows to keep the drive letters the same when re-attaching a disk.

This link alone is worth the click, especially its follow-on link to tips for solving problems with USB drives.

Fun fact:
When using SUBST, you are not limited to 26 drives
Drives like @:\ and ~:\ are possible too:

Now then! Now then! This is a family-based forum, There's no need to talk about the @:!*%$ drive!
Cheers, Chris