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[Ton]

Today I bought a ssd and tomorrow I will install Windows 7 on it and my programs including MC 17 of course. With regards to that I have a few questions:
1) Can I make a backup of the library of MC on my old hdd and restore from that in MC on my new ssd ?
2) What if, as a result of the new drive, the drive letters change ? (I want to keep the old hdd with Windows as a backup for some time) I mean: In my pc I have a few fixed hdd's and a few extra hdd's that I mount in a docking station. The files in the library are of course associated with the letters of the drive on which they are stored.
For instance: I have a drive that now has the letter K with a lot of movie files and this drive gets the letter L. How, if possible at all,  can I update the library, so that all the files are found again ? Or do I have to rebuild my library from scratch ? (In that case it has no use of course to make a backup and restore from that).
Thanks in advance.

[Alex B]

You can use the Rename, Move, & Copy Files tool for fixing the drive letter.

Select the files and run the tool. In the tool options select the "Update database to point to new location (no rename, move, or copy)" mode and check only the Find & Replace option. To fix the situation in your example, find K:\ and replace it with L:\. Verify that the new paths in the preview are correct before proceeding.

You may also need to disable or reconfigure Auto-Import to prevent it from removing the missing files before you have applied the change.

Alternatively you can simply change the drive letters in Windows Disk Manager (run diskmgmt.msc).

[Ton]

Alternatively you can simply change the drive letters in Windows Disk Manager (run diskmgmt.msc).

Thanks for your quick reply.

I assume that with the above you mean to change the letters (when they are changed) back to the original ones ? E.g. when K is changed to L, change it back to K ?

And I also assume that I can use a backup of the library to restore from that ?

[Alex B]

Yes, you can freely change the drive letters that Windows uses, expect if some programs are installed on those partitions or if some the programs need permanent access to certain files on those partitions. By default Windows and all programs install on the C: partition so usually only the C: letter has to stay as it is. Of course, if you want to, for example, change G: to F: and F: is already in use you must first change the old F: to some other, free letter.

You can restore a library backup file from your old MC instance to the new instance and use the library as before (assuming you have fixed the possible drive letter issues in a way or another.)

You may also want to copy some additional stuff, like cover art or skin folders from your old MC instance, but since you can access the old drive that shouldn't be a problem.

[Ton]

Everything went fine and I did use the "Rename, Move, & Copy Files" tool and that did work too.
I only have a problem with Windows remembering the drive letter.
As I said I have a few hdd's which I mount in an external docking station, a Sharkoon Quickport Pro connected to the esata port of my pc. I gave these drives a different letter one by one, G, H, I and J in Disk Manager.
At first (with my "old" Windows system) that worked. When I changed the drives, I also saw the associated letter in Explorer. But now sometimes it works but other times not. When I now change the drive sometimes it gets the same letter as another drive.
Do you, or anyone else, know how I can fix that if possible at all ?

[Scolex]

You may try USBDLM which is a service that keeps drive letters consistent.
It was originally designed for USB drives but may work for eSATA drives also.
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html

At least worth a little investigation.

[Ton]

Thanks. Meanwhile I took a look at it but for me it is a bit complicated how to use it.
Maybe after a few rereads of the pages it will be more clear to me, I hope.

[Alex B]

Windows stores an unique identifier and the last user letter for each drive/partition in the Windows registry. Normally Windows tries to maintain the drive letters even when the drives are temporally disconnected, but if there is a shortage of free letters it reuses the letters with newly introduced drives. I may be wrong, but in my experience this behavior is not depended on the used connection type (USB, Firewire, eSATA, etc), at least not when each drive always uses the same hardware controller as before.

You could try if starting from the highest letter would help, i.e. use Z:, Y: X:, and so on. Perhaps then an occasionally inserted hard drive, USB memory stick, camera, etc that doesn't need a permanent letter would get the first available lower letter instead of stealing one of those important letters.