The USBDLM application was designed to be a Windows service that gives control over Window's drive letter assingment for USB drives. Running as service makes it independent of the logged on user's privileges, so there is no need to give the users the previlege to change drive letters.
It automatically solves conficts between USB drives and network or subst drives of the currently logged on user. Furthermore you can define new default letters for USB drives and much more.
When a removable drive (USB flash drive, flash card reader, portable hard drive) is attached for the first time, Windows mounts it to the first available 'local' drive letter. If there is a network share on this letter, Windows XP will use it anyway for the new USB drive because since XP network shares are specific to the current user and not visible in the context of the system where the letter is assigned.
The USB drive then appears to be invisible. You can change the letter assignments in the Windows Disk Management Console with a lot of mouse clicks but you have to do it again for every new device. And, for USB devices that have no serial number (in violation of the USB standards) you have to do it too when you attach it to a different USB port.
NOTE:
USBDLM is Freeware for private and educational (schools, colleges, universities) use only. Otherwise one licence per computer is required after a 30 day test period even though the software does not expire.
Here are some key features of "USBDLM":
· check if the letter is used by a network share of the currently logged on user and assign the next letter that is really available
· reserve letters, so they are not used for local drives
· assign a letter from a list of new default letters, also dependend on many different criteria as the active user, drive type, connection (USB, FireWire), USB port, volume label, size and others
· assign letters for a specific USB drive by putting an INI file on the drive
· remove the drive letters of card readers until a card is inserted
· show a balloon tip with the assigned drive letter(s)
· define autorun events depending on many different criteria
· many other things, see help file, available online as HTML version too
What's New in This Release: [ read full changelog ]
· Bugfix: Criteria MaxTimeSinceBoot did not work
· New: Letter by USB-Port works with non USB drives by generating a port name from the location string
· New: Letters by Operating System Version
· New: deviceid text files are cached instead of being read each time
· New: ListUsbDrives shows (when started with -a) active filter drivers for drives and their device classes
· New: ListUsbDrives shows partition and FAT cluster alignment
· New: Warning balloon-tip when a drive with GUID partition table (GPT) is attached on XP or Windows 2000
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