On 2021-03-11 at 23:05, David Wright wrote: > On Thu 11 Mar 2021 at 16:02:55 (-0400), Cmdte Alpha Tigre Z wrote:
<snip> > I'm not familiar with how Windows assigns drive letters, Basically, there's an internal device ID list (hexadecimal GUIDs, if I'm not mistaken), and a mapping in the Registry. Beyond that it probably involves the internal device paths which underlie e.g. devmgmt.msc (Device Manager), and I've only recently begun to learn about that syntax in the first place. For fixed disks, no letter is assigned by default, one has to be set up explicitly. The GUI tool for doing this is diskmgmt.msc, and I believe it can also be done using command-line tools that I've rarely had occasion to touch. For removable disks (e.g. USB drives), whenever a new one is connected the next currently-not-known-used letter is assigned, for a definition of "used" that doesn't count letters taken up by being mapped to network drives. *Usually* it seems to recognize a previously-connected drive and assign it the same letter as it got before, but not always; I've yet to identify any recognizable pattern to how it handles things when two drives previously got the same letter and you connect them both. > particularly ones that are meant to be Stable. I'm not entirely sure how you're defining this. Fixed disks basically always get the same letter. Removable ones only sometimes do. > Nor what happens if two devices with the same (Stable) name are > plugged in simultaneously. I can't completely swear to this, but I believe it's one of two things: either whichever one gets connected first gets the letter and the other one doesn't show up except in e.g. diskmgmt.msc (and an error is probably logged), or whichever one gets connected second gets a different letter automatically. The exception is for letters consumed by network drives. If you have e.g. enough USB drives connected for one of them to automatically get the letter G:, and you already have G: mapped to a network location, Windows will silently allow the network location to take precedence; diskmgmt.msc will show the drive-letter mapping of the USB drive and allow you to change it, but otherwise it will mostly look as if the drive wasn't recognized in the first place. >> The boot device could always be An: (with "n" being some number), >> so the system could automatically do: "mount An: /" at boot. If >> you would prefer some operating system interoperability, we could >> use Cn: instead of An: > > I don't think you'll gain any interoperability from these proposed > changes to your filesystem. And any hope that you did have would > immediately be destroyed if you used a letter other than C: to > represent the system drive. That's not because it has to be C:, but > because everybody has respected that convention since its invention. > (IOW it's more like the convention that usr is called usr, and not > UlSteR.) > > But AIUI you're fighting hard to go backwards. Under the right > circumstances, I am led to believe that you can mount devices onto > directories in Window's NTFS filesystems, thereby avoiding letters. You still have to have the letters, or at least "letter" singular, so that you have a place to create directories onto which to do the mounting. Other than that, yes, this is possible. To be clear: I think this entire proposal (except for the part about how Windows should automatically proceed to AA: after hitting Z:) is wrongheaded, not worth the effort, virtually certain to never be implemented in practice, and would cause far more problems than it would solve. As a thought exercise it is interesting, but primarily for how it helps us dig up and see the problems which would result from trying to implement it. -- The Wanderer The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw
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