Off-topic - Mounting multiple USB sticks on Win XP

[Ben Scott]

On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 3:56 PM, Lloyd Kvam <python at venix.com> wrote:
>  Control Panel/Admin Tools/Manage Computer/Storage/Drives

  BTW, invoking "DISKMGMT.MSC" from "Run" or the command prompt also works.

> It also appears to mark the drive letter on the device rather than configuring
>  the system to start lettering from U.

  Windows stores drive letter assignments in the registry.  It has
some method of getting a unique signature for each volume.  For NTFS,
it just uses the GUID from the filesystem superblock (or whatever it's
called in NTFS).  Not sure about FAT.  Volume serial number, maybe.

>  Is this normal Windows behavior?

  Define "normal".  It's pretty normal in the sense that Windows
normally drives one batty with crap like this.  :)

  FWIW, I was NOT able to reproduce the behavior you describe on my
Win XP Pro SP2 box here at work.  I manually adjusted the mappings for
two USB sticks.  They retain their custom mappings, even if I
re-insert them out-of-order, or at roughly the same time.

  How is the user mapping the other "drives"?  SUBST?  Network drive
mappings typically override local device mappings, so shared folders
with loopback mounts might be one workaround.  (Albeit a disgusting
one.)

  A Google search for "USB drive letter assignment" (omit quotes)
seems promising.

-- Ben