Windows 7 - Hot Swapping Drive Issues

O/S Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit

I have two Hard Drive Docks for external drives. Just recently...last couple of weeks...I've noticed that every time I change one of these external drives (movies, music, etc.) for another one it changes the drive letter and makes the old one unavailable until I've rebooted my system.

Before the computer would simply recognize the new drive and assign the same letter to it. But now it cycles through all the available drive letters until none are available and then the drive will not show up in my Computer...but does show up in Computer Management but without an assigned letter.

Also, if I turn off the hard drive dock and leave the same hard drive in it and then turn this back on it will give the drive a new drive letter. This is passing strange to my way of thinking

Anyone out there with an idea of what might be going on here??

Thanks

I'm not sure why it's doing that, but you should be able to fix it... I hope.

Restart Computer
Insert a drive
Open Computer Management
Go to Disk Management
Right Click on the Disk Currently Inserted > Change Drive Letter & Paths
Give the drive the first permanent letter (i.E. E, F, G, etc)

Now remove that drive and do the same w/ # 2.

If your drives are recognized properly by the computer, you should be able to hot swap them now and have them keep the same drive letter.

For example, I have 9 drives/partitions in my computer and they were completely jumbled. Then I changed the drives letters around and:


Oh yeah, when you disconnect your drive for another, make sure you disconnect via the safely disconnect box first in computer, then power down the usb dock, then pull out the hdd.

When I tried to safely remove the drive it said it was in use by another program. Turned out to be "Smart Defrag" that was causing the trouble. I turned that off and the disks stayed the way they were supposed...damnedest thing. Wouldn't have found this out unless you had mentioned about doing a safe removal. Guess I'll be looking for a new defrag tool...maybe use TuneUp Utilities....but I'll have to find some else.

Thanks a lot.