Drive letter name for External drives
If you are using an external hard drive to automatically back up your data from your main drive. You should give the external hard drive a drive letter from the end of the alphabet instead of allowing it to choose a drive letter.
When you use a program such as Windows or some 3rd party back up software, you tell the software what drive to back the system up to. When you do, you tell the software what the drive letter is for that external drive. However, if you connect another USB device, it can actually take over the drive letter that was the drive letter of your external drive. For example...
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You have an external hard drive connected and it is drive letter G. In my computer it shows G:\WD
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You are using a program to back up to your external hard drive called WD. You tell the software to backup to G:\WD
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You then insert a flash drive
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Computer makes the flash drive drive letter G and the computer shows G:\alpine
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Your external hard drive WD is now drive H and shows in computer as H:\WD
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Your backup software thinks the WD is still at G:\WD and tries to back up to it but can't. The backup software may try to alert you of the problem but the user sometimes is not aware of the alert. Unless you check the status of the software, you may be unprotected and not aware of it.
To avoid the external drive from getting the drive letter changed without your notice, Change the drive letter for the external hard drive to drive letter Z. If Z is taken, then choose Y or some other letter at the end of the alphabet.
For instructions on how to change the drive letter, click here
For information about external drives, click here.