Some Suggestions for Portable Hard Drive Users

[Lin Evans]

I've noticed that some are having difficulties with portable devices such as external USB or FireWire hard disks, etc., with cascading device names and how this affects P2E being able to find the data.

when you create a slide show and save it to a particular device (hard disk, rewritable CD/DVD disk, etc.) a file with the extension pte is created which holds the P2E data identifying the file names and all specifics pertaining to the particular slideshow. This includes the "drive designator" or the name of the hard disk, CD/DVD drive, etc.).

Let's say you are using a portable USB hard disk and between the time you made the slide show and next time you want to modify it, etc., you have plugged in another USB device. Windows uses what is called a "cascading" method of assigning drive names such as: E:, F:, G:, H:, etc. What may have been called H: when you created your slideshow now becomes I:, etc. There are two things you need to be aware of.

First you can assign a rather permanent drive name to a particular device so that next time you use it, even if you have plugged in different devices since that time, it will still have the same drive name. This is strongly suggested. Here's a quick link to the easy method of changing the drive name:

http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000038.htm

It's quite easy to do and once you have set it to something meaningful, then it will keep this new drive name until you change it again. But this brings up another issue - the issue of the PTE file knowing where to look for its data.

Once you have stabilized a new drive name you will need to modify all the pte files which formerly looked for their data in a different place when your external drive had a different name. Fortunately this is very easy to do. There are several ways to do this, but the following will work for ALL Windows systems no matter which version of Windows you use.

First find and write down the location of and names of the files with the extension .pte on your newly named external hard disk. Next, go to the system prompt (also referred to as the DOS prompt). You will see something like this:

C:\ or P:\ or F:\ etc.....

The backslash may be followed by some path such as C:\Documents and Settings\Owner etc., it really doesn't matter. What is important is that all versions of Windows have an Editor which can be used to easily make the changes you need to make to the .pte files.

Now assuming you have written down the names and locations of all the pte files which are now located on your newly named external hard disk simply type in the word Edit followed by the location and specific file name you wish to work with. Example below:

Edit P:\myfiles\myslideshow.pte

then press the ENTER key.

The Windows Editor will open and open the .PTE file you want to work with.

At the top of the screen click on Search then on Replace then the old original location such as H: or I: or whatever the former location (you can easily see what it was by examining the file - look about nine lines down from the top). Type in the old designator such a P: (don't forget the colon) then type in the new drive name and choose "Replace All" . In an instant the Editor will replace all the formerly designated P: or whatever with the new R: or whatever. Save the file and proceed to the next file and repeat the process.

My suggestion is to choose a device letter which will remind you of the drive. For example, I use a Western Digital external drive so I call it W: If you had a Maxtor you might call it M: or a Seagate may be called S:, etc.

Hope this help a bit. After doing this P2E will be able to find the files on the newly named hard disk. This is never an issue if you always use your C: drive, but since portable devices are popular it's become an issue lately.

Best regards,

Lin