Assign Permanent Drive Letters To A Removable USB Drive In Windows

Windows assigns drive letters by progressing through the alphabets. Apart from letters A and B, drives are named C, D, etc. You have no doubt seen that the letters for the partitioned drives on your system do not change. If you have a DVD drive, it’s letter doesn’t change either but the same doesn’t hold true for USB drives. Windows assigns the drive letter to a USB drive dynamically so that a drive that was labeled F drive might later be labeled G if another drive(s) is connected. Normally this isn’t a problem unless you need the USB drive to always be assigned specific letter to keep certain paths functional. Here’s how you can assign a permanent drive letter to a USB drive in Windows.

This trick requires no third party apps and will work in Windows 7 and above. You must have your USB drive connected to your system to assign it a permanent drive letter.

Open the Start Menu and type ‘compmgmt.msc’ in the search bar and open the Computer Management window. In the left pane, expand ‘Storage’. Click on Disk Management and wait for the right pane to populate. Select the USB drive you want to assign a permanent letter to, right-click it, and select ‘Change Drive Letter and Paths…’ from the context menu.

In the dialogue box that opens, click change which should open an action box called ‘Change Drive Letter or Path’. Select the drive letter you want to assign it, and click OK to save the changes.

That’s all takes. This should work so long as the USB drive you’re using is 100% compliant with USB standards.

Backup, Backup - 3 easy ways

Method No. 1: External hard drive

What is it?

An external hard drive is a hard disk drive just like the one inside your computer, where you can store any kind of file. Many are often small and portable, making them easy to stow away in a desk drawer or carry with you. Others are much larger and are designed to sit on your desk.

How does it work?

External drives connect to your computer to provide extra storage, usually with a USB cable. Once connected, which involves little more than plugging it in, you can drag and drop or copy files you want from your computer's hard drive to the external drive. Once synced to the drive, those files will live safely away from your computer and offer protection in case your computer gets stolen or damaged.

Potential drawbacks?

Hard drives can fail at any time, for many different reasons. One day you may plug in your portable drive and it won't work, which means you won't be able to access the files you've stored on it. It's rare for a newer hard drive to fail completely, and most drives can last years and years before needing to be replaced, but just keep in mind that failures can happen.

What should I buy?

External hard drives come in many sizes and storage capacities. If you only have a few files and photos to back up, a 500GB or 1TB drive, which will cost around $50-$100, will more than suffice. A 1TB drive can hold up to a few hundred thousand photos taken with an 8-megapixel camera (depending on file size), or several thousand documents. If you have more files than that to back up, look at 2TB and up models which start around $100.

Some external hard drives have a rugged, waterproof or fireproof case and they're worth buying if you're concerned about unforeseen circumstances damaging the drive.

Method No. 2: Flash drive

What is it?

Flash drives (also called thumbdrives or jump drives) are tiny, highly portable drives, often no longer than a stick of gum. They come in a wide variety of designs, from simple sticks to novelty characters, and most can be attached to a keychain or lanyard. This method is very similar to the first one, but uses flash memory (a storage chip that can be erased and reused) instead.

How does it work?

A flash drive plugs into your computer through the USB port and once connected, you can copy or drag and drop files onto it. Once disconnected, those files will live on the flash drive until you remove them.

Potential drawbacks?

Flash drives can break down overtime, fail or become corrupted, rendering them useless. You won't be able to access your files if any of these things happen. It's unlikely that a newer flash drive will fail, but it can happen.

What should I buy?

Flash drives are smaller than external hard drives and thus offer less storage space. The biggest drives you can typically buy have 256GB of storage space, enough for a few thousand documents or photos, depending on file size. They are best suited for people with just a handful of files to backup and are especially great for students to backup schoolwork.

These drives range in price from a few dollars up to $100-plus, so pick a size and style of drive that you think will work for your storage needs and lifestyle.

Method No. 3: Cloud storage

What is it?

Cloud storage is system where you move your files from your computer to a server in a data center, away from your home or work. A cloud storage company uses those servers to offer a certain amount of space that you essentially rent to store your files.

How does it work?

Once you sign up for a cloud storage service, you can upload files with a desktop application or through the company's website over the Internet. With an Internet connection, you can view, modify and delete files stored in your cloud storage account at anytime, from any computer or mobile device. You can move files back onto your computer whenever you want.

Potential drawbacks?

Though cloud storage is a great backup option, there are a few risks. Cloud storage services can be and have been hacked, most recently in 2014 when a security breach of Apple's iCloud service exposed several celebrity photos.

Another risk is if the cloud storage company goes out of business and shuts down operations, which happened with smaller cloud storage service Firedrive. If this happens, you won't be able to access any of the files you've stored in your account.

Other drawbacks include files taking a long time to upload to your cloud folder, which can eat up your Internet bandwidth and slow down your connection temporarily. Additionally, without an Internet connection, you might not be able to access any files stored in your account.

What should I buy?

Cloud storage is inexpensive, with many companies giving you small amounts of free storage. For a monthly fee, starting around $10, you can get extra space. Cloud storage is a great choice for anyone who wants to back up photos, since many companies have mobile apps that automatically upload photos and video you take with a phone or tablet, right after you record them.

Adjust Your PC Volume By Scrolling The Mouse Wheel

Most keyboards, if not all of them, have dedicated keys for managing the volume and brightness on your system. For anyone who doesn’t have these keys, you can use controls in Windows to manage volume and brightness. If you’re looking for an even easier way to manage volume, one which involves no clicks and is super convenient, meet WheelsOfVolume. It’s a free Windows app that lets you increase or decrease the system volume by scrolling the mouse wheel over an active area.

Install WheelsOnVolume and run it. When you scroll the mouse wheel on its active areas, you will be able to increase/decrease the volume, as shown in the GIF below. The volume slider itself will not pop-up and is shown for the sake of illustrating the app’s working.

The active areas where scrolling your mouse wheel will increase/decrease the volume are the Taskbar, Desktop, and the upper-right corner of the screen.

We normally link to the developer’s site when we write about apps but we had to make an exception because the developer site for WheelsOnVolume is a puzzle at best where it’s impossible to figure out which is the download link. We are therefore linking to a software repository site.

Download WheelsOnVolume From Softpedia

This Website Logs You Out Of Everything You’re Signed In To

Kill switches are a feature made for our mobile devices since they store so much important data. In the event of a lost or stolen device, these kill switches allow us to remotely wipe our devices and protect our information from getting in the wrong  hands but it isn’t just mobile devices that have access to important information. Our browsers that we’re used to keeping in ‘Always signed in’ mode can put us at security risk if we leave our systems unattended and/or unlocked. It can also become a problem if we’re using a public system and because we just aren’t in the habit of logging out, or keeping track of the services we signed into when we start working. Meet Super Logout, a little web service with a self-explanatory name. What it does is it logs you out of all of the things, all of them (except for some reason Facebook and Twitter).

The service is linked to at the bottom. Before you click on it, be warned that once you open it, it will commence sign out and slowly, but surely, you will be signed out of all the supported services. As you’re logged out of a service, a green ‘OK’ sign appears next to the service you’ve been logged out of.

There’s only one problem with the service and that’s that it doesn’t support Facebook and Twitter which is odd. We almost impulsively sign into Facebook, are not in much of a habit of signing out of it, and it has all our pictures. Super Logout will take up to a minute to log you out of all services so don’t just visit the link and then close the browser window.

Visit Super Logout

Check Which Apps Are Draining The Most Battery In iOS 9

Battery drain is a common smartphone problem. We might like to pretend it’s something that only plagues Android users but iPhone users have it just as bad as they do. The battery and how quickly it might drain limit how much time we can spend and duly rely on our device when we’re outdoors. People do resort to back-up options like cases that can charge your phone or provide a small charge boost. One very basic way to conserve your battery’s charge is to not play games when you’re outside. Basic communication is a more important function that you need your phone for. The satisfaction of breaking a striped candy combo comes later. iOS 9 takes a much more proactive approach to helping you find which apps are the bigger battery drain with a dedicated feature that reports battery use on a per-app basis. Here’s how you can find which apps tax your iPhone battery the most in iOS 9.

Go to Settings>Battery and scroll down to see a complete list of apps and their respective battery usage. The default tab shows you how much battery an app has consumed in the last 24 hours. If you tap on the clock button, the percentage will be broken down so that you can see how much of the app’s activity occurred when it was on-screen (you were actively using it) and how much of occurred in the background.

Tap the tab called ‘Last X Days’ and you can see battery consumed by apps over a longer period of days (for as long as your phone has been collecting the data). If you tap the clock button, you can see how much of an app’s activity happened on-screen and in the background for the historical data as well.

 

This will not only help you decide which apps to avoid using when you’re out and low on battery but it will also help you identify the biggest battery drain on your phone. I was personally surprised to see that Facebook was consuming the most battery on my phone and many games that I assumed were battery hogs were consuming very little of the battery.

How To Natively Mount And Burn ISO Images In Windows 10

File Explorer in Windows 8 was revamped and the new look made its way to Windows 10. File Explorer got a new name; Windows Explorer and it bid farewell to the controls bar just below the address bar. The new UI features three basic ribbons that mimic the grouped controls you see in MS Office apps. The ribbon tabs have more or less the same controls you could access either from the control bar or the menus but some controls appear only when a specific type of file is selected. In Windows 7, regardless of what type of file you selected, you could always see a ‘Burn’ option at the top that allowed you to burn the file to a disc. With Windows 10, the option has not only migrated to a different tab, it’s also only available for certain file types. It gives the impression that you can no longer burn or mount disc files in Windows 10 when in fact, you can. Here’s how.

Here’s the burn option appearing for a folder of images in Windows 7;

When you select a similar folder in Windows 10, this is what you see;

The burn feature, as well as the option to mount a disc image file are present in Windows 10 and they do not require the use of any third-party apps, nor changes to the registry to see. To mount a disc image, select the file in Windows Explorer and go to the Manage tab. The Manage tab is always context aware and the controls in it change depending on the selected file type. When you select the ISO file, the Manage tab featuring Disc Image Tools has two options; Mount and Burn.

If you choose to Mount the file, you can see what’s inside and even execute files in it.

And if you choose to burn it, it will ask you to select the disc burning device.