Free drive number assigning utility
Tweaking.com’s Auto Assign Drive Letters is a free Windows utility that lets you disable and enable the default setting for assigning drive letters. Unlike EaseUS Partition Master Free and GiliSoft Private Disk, which deals more with partitioning and providing letters, you’ll simply toggle the feature on and off or scrub the previous letter that was assigned.
The tool only works for Windows XP, 2003, Vista and 7, where it would default to the last letter assigned to a discovered USB or another external drive. These operating systems also automatically assigned the letters, whether or not you wanted them to. The utility lets you switch the drives on and off so that you can determine how it should be assigned.
If you’re still running an older Windows system, you may find trouble with how it assigns drive letters when you attach a USB or external hard drive. Sometimes, the auto-assign feature is off by default, which means you might not be able to access the contents. Tweaking.com’s Auto Assign Drive Letters lets you toggle this setting on or off, depending on how you want it to respond.
Enabling and disabling features
Scrubbing registry settings
Older Windows systems also had a feature where they would reserve drive numbers for specific drives. When you no longer use that device, you wouldn’t be able to claim the number back for other assignments. Tweaking.com’s Auto Assign Drive Letters has a scrub tool where you can clear all formerly assigned numbers from the registry for later reassignment.
Windows compatibility
Since the utility only focuses on previous systems that had the auto-assign setting, you won’t need it for all Windows versions. As such, it only applies to Windows XP, 2003, Vista and 7. In some cases, it also works well with Server 2008.
Assigning drives on older systems
Tweaking.com’s Auto Assign Drive Letters is designed for people who still run older Windows operating systems at work or home. There aren’t many applications for it, and it has a basic design with only a few buttons. Still, it’s effective if all you need it to do is turn the auto-assign setting on or off, or if you need to scrub all the assigned numbers.
