Travel Drive not recconized - PC Technical Support

Travel Drive not recconized

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7:44 pm
May 4, 2011

Wasupwitdat1

posts 25

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I recently created a dual boot hard drive and partitioned the hard drive with 3 partitions. I have XP 32bit OS on one, XP 64bit OS on another, and a shared patition. I don't know if that would have anything to do with this but now I notice on this computer once I plug in a USB storage device I'm asked to format it. I can't use these drives for whatever reason. I easily transfer doc's and files with these removeable drives on all the other computers I access but this one. can someone help?

3:12 pm
May 6, 2011

Craig Chamberlin

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posts 870

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Post edited 3:12 pm – May 6, 2011 by Craig Chamberlin

Have you tried following the instructions on this video of mine?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…..7g&lc

It could be a simple drive letter mapping issue.

Craig Chamberlin - The PCMichiana Tech Help Show - Founder and Host - http://www.pcmichiana.com

8:02 pm
May 6, 2011

Wasupwitdat1

posts 25

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Post edited 8:18 pm – May 6, 2011 by Wasupwitdat1

OK! That was strange but helpful in a way. I have two of these drives, one Patriot 8Gb and one Memorex 1 Gb. I read that these devices are pre-formatted Fat32 and I'm guessing assigned the drive letter (E:), or the computer is what assigns the drive letter that gets used depending on what is available. Your video was useful in that I did a new format of the patition because it wouldn't let me change the drive letter in my dual boot PC on either the XP32bit or the XP64bit operating systems. I only formated the removeable drive partition using the XP32bit OS and assigned the letter (R:), for removeable, and it worked on both operating systems, Until I removed it and plugged it in a second time. Now it sees the removeable drive as (F:). I'm not done yet but I want to examine this thing some more before I go on any further.

I'm confused. I plug the USB drive in the Windows7 machine and it assigns the drive letter (E:). It shows a file but it can't open it because there is no program for Word Pad in Windows7 I'm assuming. Wait! There is a program called word pad in Windows7. Why then won't my Word Pad document open? This stuff is really eating up my free time.

8:42 pm
May 6, 2011

Wasupwitdat1

posts 25

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Continued. OK, I'm seeing a file that I created using Word Pad in XP within the last year and I've been renewing/updating it quite regularly. I wanted to move those files to my dual boot machine and somehow I did that. I don't remember how, I think I copied to a writable CD. Anyway, the Windows7 directed me to information telling me that this file has a .SHS extension and that's because the system registry has errors. This type of extension is actually quiet dangerous to my system. So I am thinking now that the Dual Boot machine is totally screwed. Back to another thread I posted here about a problem I'm having with Boot-US I'm thinking that something is seriously wrong. Both OS's work and I'm gaming (Crysis 2 ) and all my other programs seem to be working fine. If there are registry errors, what should I do about fixing them? Will I loose my operating system and have to start over with the dual boot process again. Damn! all those updates and installed programs that would have to be done over. It's killing me.

9:07 pm
May 6, 2011

Wasupwitdat1

posts 25

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Allright!!!! I'm sure you all are getting as confused as I am by now. For whatever reason, these USB drives that I've been using for months have both needed re-formatted all of a sudden. All three computers said the same thing. In order to use the devices they needed formatted. So I did that for both of them. Then I transferred some files to them and switched them around to different computers. The drive letter gets assigned by the computer, Ok, I got that. Everything seems to work now. WTF. Sorry. It just seems that my computers are always doing some to drive me nutz.

The dual boot pc seems fine. I still wish I could get rid of the floppy permenantly though.

4:18 pm
May 9, 2011

Craig Chamberlin

Admin

posts 870

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It's common for USB drives to reassign drive letters depending on the USB port you install them too. Windows assigns a hardware installation profile to each individual USB port.

What this means is when you install your flash drive on one USB port and then set the drive letter to R for removable it may assign a different drive letter if you plug that same USB flash drive into a different USB port.

There are also instances where if you install a similar or identical USB flash drive onto identical USB ports both will be reassigned the default drive letter as well. It really depends on the USB flash driver being used by Windows at the time.

It's unfortunately a side effect of "USB"… which stands for Universal Serial Bus. When something tries so hard to be universal it must run a complete reinstallation of device drivers when you plug the identical device into different USB ports. It typically does a good job remembering devices based upon their hardware serial number but will often reinstall them just in case.

Hope this helps clarify things. It's not just you, this is a very common issue with USB flash drives (and why I made my video I posted).

The problem is Windows XP didn't anticipate so many additional mapped network drives and external drives on computers so it doesn't do a very good job mapping drives after F:.

It's annoying, I completely agree.

Craig Chamberlin - The PCMichiana Tech Help Show - Founder and Host - http://www.pcmichiana.com

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