Solved! Automatically assign letter to any external hard drive I plug in

[dongo10]

I recently bought an SSD, which I put in my computer instead of the old HDD.
But now I'm having a problem, when I plug in an external hard drive, I do not see it in My Computer, but when I open Disk Management, I find it there but without a "Letter", like, c, d, e and so on.
So I right-click on it, then "change drive letter and paths" and choose a letter for it, immediately after that it appeared in My Computer.

So my question is, are there any settings to make the computer automatically assign a letter to any external hard drive?
If it was just one external hard drive, there is no problem for me to do that just once, but I have many of them.

Note: Before replacing the old HDD with the SSD, this problem never happened to me

 

[SchizTech]

I'm not aware of any setting that needs to be adjusted because it's normal behavior for a drive letter to be assigned to a newly detected USB drive.. What version of Windows are you running? If it's Win 10 (works for any version Windows 8 and up) there is a feature called Windows Reset in the Settings app. This gives you the option to keep your files but will remove installed third party programs.

 

[dongo10]

I'm not aware of any setting that needs to be adjusted because it's normal behavior for a drive letter to be assigned to a newly detected USB drive.. What version of Windows are you running? If it's Win 10 (works for any version Windows 8 and up) there is a feature called Windows Reset in the Settings app. This gives you the option to keep your files but will remove installed third party programs.

Yes, it's Windows 10.
I have a lot of third party programs, I need them.
I don't think that this is the reason because everything on the SSD is exactly what used to be in the HDD, a complete copy of it, using "MiniTool Partition Wizard". And the HDD didn't have the this problem.

 

[SchizTech]

There can be small errors that happen in the cloning process. Another possibility to look into is system restore (as was present in windiws 7 and earlier). If there's a restore point from before this problem started that could be tried.

 

[USAFRet]

Yes, it's Windows 10.
I have a lot of third party programs, I need them.
I don't think that this is the reason because everything on the SSD is exactly what used to be in the HDD, a complete copy of it, using "MiniTool Partition Wizard". And the HDD didn't have the this problem.

Is this SSD that was without drive letter the one you cloned to?

Please give us a full list of the steps you did, from original working condition to now.

 

[dongo10]

Yes, it's Windows 10.
I have a lot of third party programs, I need them.
I don't think that this is the reason because everything on the SSD is exactly what used to be in the HDD, a complete copy of it, using "MiniTool Partition Wizard". And the HDD didn't have the this problem.

Is this SSD that was without drive letter the one you cloned to?

Please give us a full list of the steps you did, from original working condition to now.

Okay. I have a laptop with Windows 10, the drive is HDD type. I bought a new SSD, I plugged it in using Sata To Usb cable. Using "MiniTool Partition Wizard", I cloned from the HDD to the SSD.
After the completion, I opened up the laptop, replaced the HDD with the SSD and start the windows up.

All the files, settings and everything else is the same exactly as it was in the HDD. The only problem I notice is the one mentioned in this thread.

 

[USAFRet]

Yes, it's Windows 10.
I have a lot of third party programs, I need them.
I don't think that this is the reason because everything on the SSD is exactly what used to be in the HDD, a complete copy of it, using "MiniTool Partition Wizard". And the HDD didn't have the this problem.

Is this SSD that was without drive letter the one you cloned to?

Please give us a full list of the steps you did, from original working condition to now.

Okay. I have a laptop with Windows 10, the drive is HDD type. I bought a new SSD, I plugged it in using Sata To Usb cable. Using "MiniTool Partition Wizard", I cloned from the HDD to the SSD.
After the completion, I opened up the laptop, replaced the HDD with the SSD and start the windows up.

All the files, settings and everything else is the same exactly as it was in the HDD. The only problem I notice is the one mentioned in this thread.

The SSD that you cloned to, and put in the laptop...has no drive letter?
Thereby the system does not boot up?

Still a bit confused here.

 

[dongo10]

Yes, it's Windows 10.
I have a lot of third party programs, I need them.
I don't think that this is the reason because everything on the SSD is exactly what used to be in the HDD, a complete copy of it, using "MiniTool Partition Wizard". And the HDD didn't have the this problem.

Is this SSD that was without drive letter the one you cloned to?

Please give us a full list of the steps you did, from original working condition to now.

Okay. I have a laptop with Windows 10, the drive is HDD type. I bought a new SSD, I plugged it in using Sata To Usb cable. Using "MiniTool Partition Wizard", I cloned from the HDD to the SSD.
After the completion, I opened up the laptop, replaced the HDD with the SSD and start the windows up.

All the files, settings and everything else is the same exactly as it was in the HDD. The only problem I notice is the one mentioned in this thread.

The SSD that you cloned to, and put in the laptop...has no drive letter?
Thereby the system does not boot up?

Still a bit confused here.

No, the SSD has a drive letter. I'm talking about other external hard drives. I have "1TB Toshiba", 5 of them.
When I plug in any of them to the computer, I do not see them in My Computer, but when I open Disk Management, I find it there but without a "Letter", like, c, d, e and so on.
So I right-click on it, then "change drive letter and paths" and choose a letter for it, immediately after that it appeared in My Computer.

 

[USAFRet]

No, the SSD has a drive letter. I'm talking about other external hard drives. I have "1TB Toshiba", 5 of them.
When I plug in any of them to the computer, I do not see them in My Computer, but when I open Disk Management, I find it there but without a "Letter", like, c, d, e and so on.
So I right-click on it, then "change drive letter and paths" and choose a letter for it, immediately after that it appeared in My Computer.

Ah, OK.
This often is the case with brand new drives.

If they've been previously used elsewhere, then I'm not sure what the issue would be.
They should get a drive letter...generally the "next one".

 

[dongo10]

http/www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-3349841/windows-assign-letter-usb-drive.html

The thread above has the same issue as me.
Someone there said the follwing:
"This is an issue I encountered with Windows 10 as well. Fortunately, there's an easy solution that does not require any third-party downloads or registry modification.

1) Open Command Prompt as Administrator (search for Command Prompt in the Start Menu, right click, Run as Administrator)
2) Type 'diskpart' and hit Enter.
3) Once in the DISKPART command prompt (it takes several seconds to load) type 'automount enable' and hit Enter.

That should re-enable automatically mounting new volumes, fixing the issue."
________________

I don't know if I should try that as I don't know what does "diskpart" do exactly. I'm afraid I'll lose my data in the drives. They're not new.

 

[SchizTech]

diskpart is a command-line program built into Windows. It's a bit like a command line version of the disk management window, with more power to do things the normal disk manager isn't allowed to. That suggestion won't affect files at all.