usb flash -vs- mapped drives

I am trying to use my usb flash drive. I know how to use it...

It is a Sony Micro Vault (password protected, etc). I have several others that do the same thing.

When I plug it in, it automatically assigns itself to drive "F" because that is the next physical drive letter that is available. However, drive "F" is already mapped to a network drive (virtual).

I can go into computer management and change the drive letter to something that is not in use. I can then access it no problem.

When I remove it and then add it again, it assigns itesef to drive "F" again! It doesn't remember what drive letter I assign it to.

I know the easy way would be to create a custom login script to change my home drive to a different letter... so I can keep drive "F" available for other physical drives... and I'll probably end up doing this... but I should have to!

When adding a physical drive, after the drives have already been mapped, will the physical drive try to assign itself to a mapped drive?!! That doesn't make any sense to me!

Instead of recreating my script(s), I just assigned my CDROM drives to "Y" and "Z".... but I still think that it should check to see if there are virutal drives before assigning a physical drive to a drive letter that is currently being used for a virtual drive....

I didn't know a usb key can stole a drive letter from a map drive.. That could turn into a very annoying bug in coorporate world.

sure does. When you start your logon scripts to take letters from the top "F" "G" etc. it is a real pain. It also does this with mp3 players... so far anything that is flash media and plug and play using usb. hot swapable?

A simple change to the logon scripts will fix it... but it can be a pain because most people know their mapped drives as

"I can't get to my "F" drive." Or something of that sort.

In my case, I just relettered my CDROMs, freeing two physical drive letters at the beginning of top (D,F). It won't accept "B", skips right over that one.

Here is the weird part:

I have a sony micro vault usb drive.

It mounts the flash drive and then you have to execute a program to get to the password/encrypted part of the drive. It uses yet another drive letter for this. But, this will pull from the next drive letter that is not in use (physical or virtual). It seems to look first, unlike windows xp.

For giggles, I only left one physical drive letter available for the usb drive and mapped all the rest to different virtual drives. It didn't map itself at all after that. I had to unmap a virtual drive and then execute/unlock the password protected area to get it to map again.

Fun stuff! I have only tried this on XP Pro Sp1 so far...

interesting... although to be honest I have always mapped my network drives in the first instance to the higher end of the alphabet so I've never come across this problem.

The phenomenon happens on my XP comps as well... I can def see this becoming a pain for some folks.

Z