Memorex TravelDrive in USB Port Not Seen in Windows Explorer

[bvaughn]

I have a Memorex TravelDrive in one of the USB ports on my ThinkPad. Until recently this drive appeared as drive E: in Windows Explorer. I put a Kingston TravelLite SD/MMC Reader in the other USB port (to download photos from a digital camera's memory card), and Windows XP promptly assigned the E: drive to that device. The Memorex drive disappeared from the Windows Explorer folder tree. When I removed the Kingston card reader, the Memorex drive was still in the other USB port, but there was no drive E: in the Windows Explorer folder tree.

I shut down and restarted the ThinkPad. Windows XP tells me (in the device manager) that the Memorex drive is working properly, yet I still do not see it -- there is no drive E: (but there are drives D: and F:, assigned to other devices) -- in the Windows Explorer folder tree.

I'm stumped. Can anyone suggest (1) what happened and (2) how to restore access to drive E: (the Memorex drive)?

[Kyocera]

You may have to go to windows disk management and assign another drive letter to your device that "is" recognized, some devices just default to use a certain letter.

[bvaughn]

Thanks, Kyocera. I used disk management to assign drive letter E: to the TravelDrive, and it worked. Now ... do you have an opinion on what caused the problem?

[Kyocera]

In the past I have run into my usb devices not working on customers computers, if they had a few or more network drives, for some reason some usb devices will only search for an empty e,f,g drive (you pick which one) if those are not available they don't search any further.

[dsvochak]

In addition to what kyocera pointed out, I've seen XP "remember" (probably somewhere in the registry) what drive letter has been assigned to a particular device which sometimes creates your situation when another device has grabbed the assisgned drive letter. In some cases, "plug and play" isn't quite there yet.