Question from Scooba

I received a comment left by a reader who was having trouble with his Synctoy folder pairs. I'm not really a tech expert, but if I understood his message correctly, I think this should help.

In short, I think here's the situation

• he built a folder pair between his PC's HD and an external (likely USB-connected) HD
• one day (mysteriously) his external HD is assigned a different drive letter by windows
  
• all the previously configured folder pairs now refuse to work
  

So here's my response... I thought perhaps this may be of help to others having this same problem.

Dear Scooba, sounds like a problem where your windows decides to assign a different drive letter to your external drive... did I understand that correctly?

If it is, then don't worry, its a fairly common problem.

I used to tear my hair out when iTunes and Picasa couldn't find my music and photos respectively when suddenly one day the drive letter got changed.

The easy way out of this is to change the letter back to the one which you used to set up your folder pair. And no, I'm afraid the same problem exists for XP, so I'm afraid we can't blame vista for this doozy.

Try this (I can comment for XP only, sorry, can't comment on Vista)...

- go to Control Panel ==> Administrative Tools ==> Computer Management

- on the left window, click on "Disk Management"

- on the right window, select your external HD

- Right-click that HD and select "Change Drive Letter and Path"

- BE VERY CAREFUL WITH THE ABOVE SELECTION..... because if you click the next one, it would be to FORMAT your HD....!!

- A small window will pop up and you'll be able to assign your drive back to the original letter

- click OK and your folder pairs should start working again

Hope you find this useful.... I find myself doing this quite often... especially if you're like me and have up to 3 external HD's running at one go... and need each of them to have one specific drive letter!

Cheers!