USB Drive Letter Manager for Windows

M

Morlock

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 8, 2012
Messages
508
I'm trying to figure out how to use this thing:

USBDLM V5.3.2 - USB Drive Letter Manager for Windows
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html

So W10 can't **** up my drive assignments and labels, as it just did yesterday. But I'm not well-versed in using .ini files. E.g:

http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_help_e.html

Hint: Using an INI on the attached drive can cause delays because for reading the INI the drive's file system must be mounted. No problem with most drives but some don't like be read to quickly after arrival...

The maximum waiting time for the file being read is 10s and can be changed in section Settings like so:

[Settings]
VolumeInformationMaxWait=12000
Click to expand...

Is that milliseconds (i.e., 12000 = 12 seconds)? If I want to change the wait time to 30 seconds, do I use 30000?
 
I'm having trouble figuring out how to write this config, because 1 the help is written in ESL, but mostly 2 I'm not seeing any examples showing how multiple drives should look. I found this, which is written in EFL, but suffers the same lack of examples:

http://florian.freundt.org/blog/?p=208

Just open the config file USBDLM.ini and place code like this snippet in there

;1000 GB Samsung HDD in black Icy Box
[DriveLetters10]
DeviceID1=SAMSUNG HD103UJ
Letter1=F
Click to expand...

The first line is just a comment. The number in the second line behind “DriveLetters” is supposed to be incremented with every drive you add (10, 20, 30, …) but while writing this blog entry I noticed that I actually failed to do so when I set up my file a few months ago and it worked anyway. In the third line you insert the value of Friendly Name, Drive DevID or Ctrl DevID to tell the program which drive to assign a letter to. And in the last line you specify which drive letter it should be. That’s all.

Next time you plug in that drive it is automatically assigned the letter F:\ even if D and E are still available. Voilà, fixed drive letters for external USB drives.
Click to expand...

First problem I see is "DeviceID1"; every example of "DeviceID=" in the help text seems to lack any numbers at the end. "DeviceID1" gets zero search hits.

The next problem I see is that I have no idea what multiple entries should look like. I grok how to get the DeviceID, but have no idea how to write the config. Should it look like this?

[DriveLetters30]
DeviceID1=blabla123
Letter1=D
DeviceID2=blabla456
Letter2=E
DeviceID3=blabla789
Letter3=F
Click to expand...
 
I can't figure out what the fuck this kraut wants in the config. I've tried this:

[DriveLetters10]
DeviceID=copy-pasted-string-from-Uwe's-USB-Drive-Info-app-USBDLM-Criteria-section-that-Uwe-Boll-says-works
Letter=A
VolumeLabel=HelloWorld
[DriveLetters20]
DeviceID=copy-pasted-string-from-Uwe's-USB-Drive-Info-app-USBDLM-Criteria-section-that-Uwe-Boll-says-works
Letter=B
VolumeLabel=YourMother

And this

[DriveLetters10]
DeviceID1=copy-pasted-string-from-Uwe's-USB-Drive-Info-app-USBDLM-Criteria-section-that-Uwe-Boll-says-works
Letter1=A
VolumeLabel1=HelloWorld
[DriveLetters20]
DeviceID2=copy-pasted-string-from-Uwe's-USB-Drive-Info-app-USBDLM-Criteria-section-that-Uwe-Boll-says-works
Letter2=B
VolumeLabel2=YourMother

And this

[DriveLetters]
DeviceID=copy-pasted-string-from-Uwe's-USB-Drive-Info-app-USBDLM-Criteria-section-that-Uwe-Boll-says-works
Letter=A
VolumeLabel=HelloWorld
DeviceID=copy-pasted-string-from-Uwe's-USB-Drive-Info-app-USBDLM-Criteria-section-that-Uwe-Boll-says-works
Letter=B
VolumeLabel=YourMother

And none of this shit works. And nowhere on the GD WWW is there an example with two fucking drives strung together. (By "works," I mean "changes the label so I know I'm having any effect whatsoever" after I eject the device and plug it back in)

Edit: after looking at the web help (easier to search) again, it looks like I'm doing it right. Maybe I'm just expecting the program to do something it doesn't do; I thought I could dictate drive labels, for example. But I just unplugged my external drive (R) and plugged in a flash drive that this Windows install has never seen before, and it set to U, just like I specified in my config. Trouble is I don't know any way of really testing if this thing is working, short of unplugging stuff and plugging it back in, and Windows usually handles that okay, so I have no way of knowing if USBMCMLXVIII is really working or not.

Edit2: nope, I guess it's not configured right, cuz it ain't doing shit for the external drive I just unplugged. Windows promptly assigned it the wrong letter. This all started when I installed Avira AV. Something to do with autoruns on my external drives, which I guess Avira didn't like because exploit. Now four of my external drives are labeled "local disc" in Explorer (the names are fine in Disk Manager) and I can't rename them. Which sucks when you have 16 partitions then add a half dozen thumb drives and a DVD drive.
 
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