Help creating an autorun file for external drive

February 21, 2008 10:44 AM

I have a big external USB hard drive with three partitions for infrequently used files and backup. I was wondering what kind of file to make to have it automatically open a folder showing the drive when I power on the device and not ask me what I'd like to do with each of the other drives.

Currently, when I power on, it starts searching through all my files for an autorun file (which isn't there) - I have to cancel it or it would run for awhile to find nothing; this searching is what I'd like to have not happen


I took a look at some autorun.inf files that I put on the external drives partitions (let's say that they're R, S and T) but that didn't stop the search from happening, or get a explorer view of the folders inside...


Any help on this? Or resources that you could point me to?

posted by royalchinook to computers & internet (7 comments total)

Turning off Autoplay in Windows
posted by fusinski at 11:16 AM on February 21 [1 favorite]

you could create an autorun.ini file that looks like this

[autorun]
open=launch.bat
ACTION = Launch portable workspace

Then in launch.bat which is a simple windows batch file you could code it to open whatever folder(s) you wanted.

I think that should get rid of the auto play searching that goes on now.
posted by remthewanderer at 12:04 PM on February 21

When the drive is online, open up Windows Explorer and right click on the drive letter(s) and one of the properties tabs should be autoplay, and choose the option you like best.
posted by gjc at 4:50 PM on February 21

Right on the drive and choose properties, and then one one the tabs will be autoplay. Is what I mean.
posted by gjc at 4:51 PM on February 21

Sheesh, why didn't I think of that - thanks gjc - the simplest answer in this was the right one!
posted by royalchinook at 7:59 PM on February 21

royal, I know the feeling. happens to me constantly. :)
posted by gjc at 8:19 PM on February 21

To really gain control of external USB drives, including having them always appear as the same letter, try http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html

It's wonderful!
posted by flutable at 7:40 PM on February 22