Can anyone help a technophobe with a computer problem?

[Delamanda]

 have spent the last few weeks getting very, very organised. This is now my workflow:

Download photos onto pc
Copy photos to small portable drive (to carry around and use with laptop)
Copy files to external hard drives H and I
Import RAW files from drive I to Lightroom, tag, rate, flag etc. Those that I develop, go back to drive I and then once a week are copied to drive H.

I moved my computer yesterday and everytime I plug drive I into the pc, it comes up as drive K. I have moved it around into every possible slot but it will not come up as drive I, so of course, when I go into Lightroom, all my files are 'offline or missing' because there is no more drive I. Is there anything I can do, apart from bursting into tears? Drive H keeps changing from I to G to J ...

[picsfor]

you can go into drive settings and rename the drives...

[Hinfrance]

Depending upon which version of windows you have it will vary a bit, but basically, as Andrew says, you just need to reallocate the drive letter. Just google 'allocate drive letter in windows' and follow whatever set of instructions is for your version.

If you connect and disconnect portable drives then windows ( don't know about 7) will just allocate the next available drive letter to whatever you plug in. So once you have solved it this time, if you then disconnect the drive and say plug the camera or another usb drive in in the meantime, you could very easily find all the drive allocations not as you would like again.

[Jonathan]

'k I know very little about PCs and their stupid drive naming protocols (actually that's a lie - there's a setting somewhere that tells it next available drive letter) but I do know Lightroom.

Right click drive I in your folder tree (in Lightroom Library module).  Select "update folder location".  Browse to find the right location ("K:").  Stop crying

[Delamanda]

Bless you all and thank you very, very much.  I now have Lightroom functioning with the re-assigned I drive and have found all my pics.  The thought of retagging 20,000 pics was not appealing.  I have stopped crying 

[Oldboy]

Windows always uses the next drive letter available, so to avoid this problem when setting up an new external drive always choose Z as the new letter, as that's unlikely to change, unless you have twenty drives plus.   Connect the new drive and windows will give it the next drive letter. Go into Control Panel, Administrative Tools,Computer Management,Disk Management then select the drive and right click and select change Drive letter and paths option. From the Window select change and enter the new drive letter from the dropdown list and click OK to close the window and OK again to close the next window. This means the drive will always have the drive letter Z when connected.  

[Jonathan]

You PC boys crack me up.....

Seriously, 2010 and you use letters for drives?  OS X (and I bet any other sensible OS) has been using names for years.  Names are decided at format time not mount time deciding them at mount time is a little crazy when it causes issues like this.  Um, what happens when you attach 30 drives to a machine.....?

[picsfor]

Oddly enough you've been able to name all drives on MS Windows for a good few years now and i have always done this as a way of reducing the chances of this sort of thing happening - though with MS Windows nothing is guaranteed. Also, giving the drives names has saved me trying to member which is the main back up EHD and which is the secondary EHD.

[Oldboy]

  Um, what happens when you attach 30 drives to a machine.....?

It slows down!