I use an external USB HD to back up (using Norton Ghost - I know but it was free with my PC!) and it would always come up as drive K when it was switched on so the auto backup thing is set to go to drive K and when Ghost looks for old backups (at the minute I need to delete some to make room), it will only look at drive K. Recently, I connected a USB stick which decided it was drive K so the external drive comes up as drive L... without the USB stick, my walkman phone comes up as K (oddly its memory stick comes up as M) but it doesn't matter if the external drive is the only thing connected - it always comes up as L.

Any ideas?!

This is why one of the first things I do is change the drive letters of my CD/RW and DVD/RW drives to "Q"and "V" - so they don't shift around.

Lots of folks like Ghost - because it, along with Acronis True Image, are good.

my walkman phone comes up as K (oddly its memory stick comes up as M)

The system sees the phone's internal memory and the memory stick as a separate USB storage devices.

Did you try changing the external drive's assigned letter? Right click on My Computer > Manage > Disk Management. Then right click on the drive and select Change Drive Letter. If something is already using that letter, you may have to shuffle the other device out of the way, to an unused letter.

Unfortunately, there's no guarantee the new letter assignment will stick, as next time you insert a memory stick, the letters may shift again.

Originally Posted by Digerati

Did you try changing the external drive's assigned letter? Right click on My Computer > Manage > Disk Management. Then right click on the drive and select Change Drive Letter. If something is already using that letter, you may have to shuffle the other device out of the way, to an unused letter.

Thanks, yes that was all I needed to do!

Great! Glad it worked and thanks for the followup.