External Hard Drive is now K instead of J.?

Question

I'm losing my mind and tearing my hair out. I have an external drive that I keep all my media files on. Up until now, it's always been labeled as my J drive. I unplugged it, plugged it in to a laptop as I, and when I brought it home and plugged it in, it's now labeled K.

I'm having problems with MANY things that are looking for the files on J, and lo and behold, my computer doesn't acknowledge that there's a J drive, it goes from I to K, and no matter what of the 5 usb ports I have it goes into, it shows up on my pc as K.

I'm not interested in fixing every freaking playlist I have and every other shortcut - I want to set my drive as J again. Any ideas?

Answer 1

This is the procedure for changing drive-ID's on Windows XP:

Start --> Control Panel --> Performance and maintenance --> Administrative Tools

Double-click on Computer Management icon. This opens the Computer Management Window.

On the left pane, select Storage. On the right pane, Double-click on Disk Management. You will then see the list of all existing drives.

Select the drive whose logical ID you want to change. Select Action --> All Tasks --> Change Drive Letters and Paths. This opens a small window showing the drive you selected.

Click the 'Change' button. Then select the new drive letter that you want to use for the drive. Click OK button to apply changes.

Answer 2

if you go to the control panel and to administration then computer management and select disk management. WHEW!

you can select your drive and change the letter by right clicking it.

make sure you delete the one you don't want and add the one you do.

Answer 3

Look in the "My Computer" folder/directory, what could of happened is you connected another drive, and it took the J drive letter position, then you connected your external hard drive, noticed that there was a drive connected under the J letter position, then took the next space in line, letter K, there are two ways to fix this

1. Look at all the ports on your computer and make sure there isn't a drive connected to the USB, COM, or Parallel port, if there is, disconnect it and reconnect your external hard drive, it should then get the letter J position

2. If you don't have a drive connected to the computer, or if it's something internal, Click Start>Right Click "My Computer">Click on "Manage">Click on "Disk Management">Right click on Drive K>Click on "Change Drive Letters and Paths">Change drive K to Drive J, if there is a drive in the J position, change it to a high drive letter first (Like X, Y or Z, any letter will work, you just want to get it out of the way), then change drive K to drive J, then go back to the other drive and change it from X, Y or Z to K, now whenever you connect the external hard drive, it will be drive J

BTW, using 3rd party software to manage your drive letters is not a good idea

Oh, you already figured all that out, good

Answer 4

Go to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management

Right click on your External HD and choose "Change drive letter and paths" and you can change it to J from there.

HTH.