You can have two separate drive letters that share a name, like C: and D:.
You can have two separate drive letters that share a name, like C: and D:.
Can you put two hard drives on your computer with different letters like C: and D:, but give them the exact same name? For example, call both them "Media 1". Will this cause problems for files to get messed up or make Windows act weird? I know it usually uses drive letters mostly. But is there any time when just the names matter instead of the letters? Like if one drive says E: and another says M:, but they are actually called Media 1?
The reason I have this setup is because when I travel, I don't bring those big external hard drives with me usually. So while working on my desktop, my photos live on a drive called "Media1" which shows up as drive letter M. On my laptop, the internal drive is also named "Media1", but when that same external SSD plugs into it, it gets shown as drive letter D because the laptop already has an internal drive labeled M. I have to do this so Adobe Lightroom works smoothly (if the drive letter changes, Lightroom complains and I have to change all my files every time it does). So I keep the same label for both drives just in case Lightroom gets confused about which one is being used. Does that make sense? I don't know if Lightroom looks at the letter or the actual name of the drive to find your photos, so I think on a Mac computer at least, it probably uses the name instead of the letter because Apple doesn't like using letters for drives.
It's a common mistake. I keep changing the drive letter, and now Lightroom can't find my photos. This happens when Windows assigns new letters to external drives while I'm using them. I need to move my files back or change the setting so it stays on one letter.
I spent four years trying to use Windows Explorer search and every single time it said "No items match your search." Turns out, after upgrading, I had two drives with the same label. Long ago, I cloned an old drive onto a new SSD but left the original hard drive plugged in (just turned it off in Disk Management). Eventually, the original drive's letter came back, and Windows got confused because of the duplicate labels. Taking the drive letter away from the old drive fixed the problem. TL;DR: Windows search gets mixed up if there are two drives with the same label, even if they have different letters.