I am writing a PowerShell script that will back up several folders from my Vista drive to an external USB drive, using robocopy.
Windows does not guarantee that it will always assign the same drive letter to the external drive.
What is the best way to get around this problem?
How do I code the destination paths?
Thanks.
Windows could change that drive letter assigned to your USB drive.
The correct way to do this backup is mounting the USB drive in an empty directory. Not only does it add some consistency to swapped storage, it also allows for a persistent shortcut on a Windows desktop.
That's how to:
Run "diskmgmt.msc" from Windows' Run/Start Search box,
Right-click on your plugged-in drive and choose "Change Drive Letter
and Paths."
Remove the current drive letter assigned to your drive.
Click on the Add button
Select Mount into the following empty NTFS folder and click on
browse.
Now navigate to the subfolder that you want to assign the USB drive
to and confirm the assignment.
The USB drive will from now on be accessible from that folder (if it is connected to the computer of course).
Now you can change your script to select, as destination folder, the folder with the mounted drive and forget the drive letter persistence.
Use can use "Drive Letter View" available free at http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/drive_letter_view.html to assign desired drive letter to external drive. From this moment on, the selected removable media will always be mounted with same letter. (Test with windows 8.1)
Towards commercial side "Zentimo storage" at http://www.zentimo.com is the best solution.
or
Use Diskpart
diskpart> list volume
select volume n
assign letter=T i.e the new letter.
Are you sure it's impossible? (I don't have an external hard drive to test now). I think that if you right-click on "computer", then select manage, you can select a letter for an hard drive that will allways be the same for this disk.
However, can't you use the serial number of the disk?
(sorry if my explanations weren't well explained, I'm not a native english speaker)
Related
I have two Blu-ray drives installed and mounted like in the image:
The Win explorer names
Now, when I view them in Device manager, they have these names:
Device manager names
Now how can I rename these two, the literal drive names? I found no solutions online.
If what you want is to change the drive names in device manager, it is here.
I had 7 drives, but after formatting the windows one of that drive(I:) not showing, help me to retrive that drive without loosing any data
I think your drive is unmounted
https://www.isunshare.com/windows-10/add-a-hard-drive-to-this-pc-in-windows-10.html
your drive might missing the Drive Letter or path please follow the bellow method to assign a new letter
click on windows
search drive management ( click on "Create or format hard disk partition")
right click on your missing drive and select "Change Drive letter and path"
click on "Add"
select any one of the given letter
click ok
check the drive in this pc
tada, drive retrived with all data
OR
If your drive is unmounted follow those steps: https://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/58667/mount-drive-windows/
How could I get an autorun USB drive in Windows 7/8/10. autorun.inf doesn't seem to work anymore. Also could this work without any rubber duckie USB drives? Maybe trick windows into thinking it is a DVD or CD to autorun?
If you mean AutoPlay, you can set it up like this:
Open Control Panel and navigate to 'Hardware And Sound' > 'AutoPlay'.
Find the 'Removable Drive' option.
Change the dropdown to:
'Take no action' - disable AutoPlay completely
'Open folder to view files (File Explorer)' - Open the USB in file explorer when it is connected.
'Ask me every time' - Show a program chooser: most likely what you want.
you might need to change a windows registry entry to allow media to be run automatically so that the autorun.inf file can be executed once the device is plugged in
[autorun]
Icon=lock.ico
Label=Payroll Information
;Open=FetchSalariesDB.EXE
ShellExecute=FetchSalariesDB.EXE
UseAutoPlay=1
Yes, there is a way,
to do this you have to convert your USB into "NTFS" normally its "FAT32"
To do this, find your USB drive on your computer
https://i.stack.imgur.com/DkFOK.png -- Image (just my USB drive)
Then right-click on that USB drive. Then click on "Change Format" or "Format" https://i.stack.imgur.com/42yLK.png -- Picture of that. Then click and change it to "NTFS" instead of "FAT32" https://i.stack.imgur.com/ziA67.png -- And another picture of that. Then all you have to do from here is making a regular autorun.inf file and it will autorun whatever you desire, and it even works without the permission from "AutoPlay" Have fun :)
I have a client whose data has been moved from the H drive to the I drive, but their Access export script seems to have hardcoded the H drive as the destination even though it no longer exists on the new system. How would I create an H drive that maps to the I drive? I'm a unix/linux guy.
I'm guessing something like mklink /d H: I:? Would that work?
No, mklink isn't going to do it for you. What you need to do is to create a virtual hard drive (VHD) and copy the client's data to it. (Or modify the export script, which is the best thing to do.) I used Windows 7 to test my instructions below.
Start-> run-> diskmgmt.msc (accept all defaults... I'm not doing anything special below)
From the menu bar select Action -> Create VHD
Choose the location and name the file (which will be the vhd) and specify the size and click OK.
Right click on the Disk # (underneath will be Unknown and the size and "Not Initialized"). Select "Initialize Disk" & click OK
Right click on the black bar of the unallocated disk space and select "new simple volume". A wizard opens up an on the second page it lets you assign the drive letter. Complete the wizard and you're done!
You can use good old SUBST command for that
"subst H: I:"
Create some startup CMD to make it available after reboot.
Map a network drive to \\localhost\H$ and set it to Drive I.
I'm having a little trouble figuring out how to use a root directory with a program for flash drives. For example: I'm trying to run "E://Program/data/install.vbs" but the driver letter keeps changing. Any help will be appreciated, thank you.
I think the batch version of what I am looking for is %root%\Program\data\install.bat but I still need it in vbscript form.
Try to "lock" the letter of flash drive in Computer Management is you are using Windows.
If you use Windows then go to Control Panel > Disk Management
Find your drive, right click, select "change drive latter and path", click on "add" browse to a new folder on your local computer [C:\MyFlashCard].
Every time you connect your flash drive, no matter which drive latter it gets, it will be mounted to the folder you selected, so you can use the local path. [c:\MyFlashDrive\program\data\install.vbs]