How To Determine FlashDrive Letter

[lhooker]

Is there anyway to determine the drive letter of a flashdrive inserted into a PC ? I have a backup routine that backs up a MS Access database to a flashdrive. I need to determine the flashdrive letter.

 

[jdraw]

Haven't tried this, but found it via Google. Hope it's useful.
http://www.howtogeek.com/96298/assign-a-static-drive-letter-to-a-usb-drive-in-windows-7/

 

[lhooker]

JDraw,

Thanks ! ! ! . . . I took a look at the solution. Is there anyway to check if a drive letter exists ? The drive letters that are used are "E" and "F". If I knew which drive letter existed, then I could point the backup routine to the existing drive letter.

 

[jdraw]

I haven't used the material at the link. Did you look at his tutorial and try it. I don't think you have to have contiguous letters (just guessing based on his letters).
Try his technique, then test the result; then you will know exactly whether it meets your needs or not.
Good luck. Let us know what your tests show. It could help others.

 

[lhooker]

JDraw,

I'll try and report back. I was hoping to find a solution that would check if a drive letter exists, then point the backup routine to the existing PC flashdrive drive letter. The drive letters that are used by the PC flashdrive(s) are "E" and "F".

 

[Cronk]

The link provided shows how to manually assign another drive letter to a storage device.

I can't test here but try
? dir("F:\")
and
? dir("E:\")

 

[Solo712]

Is there anyway to determine the drive letter of a flashdrive inserted into a PC ? I have a backup routine that backs up a MS Access database to a flashdrive. I need to determine the flashdrive letter.

Here is a stub of a routine which I am using to seek a license file on a flash drive:

Public Function GetLicDrive() As String
     '
    Dim FSO As Object, Drive As Object, Info As String, DrL As String
    Dim DrLetters As String, d As Integer, Released As Boolean
     '
    Set FSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
 
     '
    DrLetters = "EFGHIJKLMN"
    GetLicDrive = "Not Found"
    On Error Resume Next
    Released = False
    Do Until Released
      For d = 1 To 10
        DrL = MID(DrLetters, d, 1) & ":"
        Set Drive = FSO.GetDrive(DrL)
        If Drive.DriveType = 1 Then ' = "Removable"
          If Drive.IsReady Then
            If Drive.VolumeName = "MyName"  '<==establish ID of drive 
              GetLicDrive = DrL
              Released = True
              Exit For
            End If
          End If
        End If
      Next d
      If GetLicDrive = "Not Found" Then
        d = MsgBox("Insert Jump Drive in a USB Port and Press Ok !", vbOKCancel + vbExclamation)
        If d = vbCancel Then Released = True
      End If
    Loop
End Function

Hopefully, the routine is easy to adapt for your purposes.

Best,
Jiri

 

[jdraw]

lhooker,

I just followed the instructions in the link I posted earlier. I set up my flash stick(kingston Data Traveller) as T: using the method in the link. It worked fine. I saved the drive letter change , then closed the Control Panel etc. I did a safely remove flash stick, and then reinserted the flash stick into a different USB port. It shows up as T:. I was trying to get my flash drive to have a constant/static Drive letter, and this seems to do it.

If your flash drive has a specific DriveName, then I think the code Jiri proposed would go thru a list of drive letters and look for your driveName.

I'm running Windows 8.1

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Technically, drive letters A-Z always exist but may be de-referenced (i.e. not mapped; not pointing to anything). The file system object lets you look at the current directory and you can change directories. If you declared a trap handler in front of code to do fso.ChDir("driveletter:/") and didn't get an error, you could then try do fso.GetAttr("driveletter:/") to see if it comes back as a directory (vbDirectory). If the drive isn't mapped, you would take the trap or at least not find the root directory of that drive letter.

 

[lhooker]

Thanks to everyone who responded ! ! ! I already applied Jraw's solution and it worked fine.