P: Allow use of Drive Letters A: and B:

Hi, I mounted a network share to drive letter B:\ (maybe not a good idea) -> However, within LR-Classic the drive was not shown as a possible target within the Import-Diaolog. The problem was fixed by assigning another drive letter above C:\ (e.g. O:\).

Moderators, @Rikk Flohr: Photography, please replace the second correct answer above:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-ideas/p-allow-use-of-drive-letters-a-and-b/idc-p/12262789#M4519

with this post, which is a much easier, more convenient solution for choosing an A or B drive as the Import destination:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-ideas/p-allow-use-of-drive-letters-a-and-b/idc-p/12906312/page/3#M15247

Then the two correct answers will provide simple and easy solutions for using an A or B drive for both the Import source and Import destinations:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-ideas/p-allow-use-of-drive-letters-a-and-b/idi-p/12249562/page/2#comments

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-ideas/p-allow-use-of-drive-letters-a-and-b/idc-p/12906312#M15247

I added a new hard disk(A:) to my laptop mainboard to increase storage and improve performance. However, the lightroom class cannot recognize the new disk nor the holders within it. How can I add this new disk?

"In Lr 1.x - Windows XP was still a valid OS... it would have broken things big time..."

Windows XP. the successor to Windows NT, provided the Win32 API, which has always allowed apps to query device properties. That would have allowed LR 1 to identify which drives were unsuitable (e.g. floppies) without making assumptions about the drive letter.  (After all, you could have a floppy assigned to D:)

"Agreed, Adobe should have fixed this back in LR 1. "

In Lr 1.x - Windows XP was still a valid OS... it would have broken things big time...

This is super frustrating, my main and only built in hard drive is drive A, all the other letters are for external drives, raid arrays and so on. I just want to import to my local drive A which is also where ~150000 files in my local catalog are stored. You would think that Lightroom could deduce that with that many images on the drive, it's not a floppy. Never mind which there are APIs to see what type of device it is. No excuses Adobe, floppy disks aren't even manufactured any more. This is in  LR Classic 11.3.1.

32- and 64-bit versions of Windows haven't reserved A: and B: for floppies for at least the past two decades (perhaps ever), though it would assign those letters by default if a floppy was present.  Win32 (starting with Windows 95) provides API calls for enumerating connected volumes and discovering their type. It's purely an Adobe programming error that LR assumes A and B are floppy drives (a programming error that was more common 15 years ago).

There used to be a Microsoft support article explaining this (linked above), but it's long gone, as are the threads in various forums discussing it -- I can find just one, from 2015.

The disastrous redesign of the Import window in LR 6.2.1 removed this programming error, and for a brief glorious moment in time, LR treated drives assigned A or B just like those assigned any other letter.

The File > Add Photos command of Lightroom Desktop (Cloudy) does it correctly:

Here's what Windows 10 shows for a USB drive assigned A:

Light room does not allow importing from my memory cards onto either of my SSDs labeled A: and B:.

There are several discussions stating that this is due to legacy reasons (those drive letters being reserved for floppy drives) but that restriction is over two decades old. Stating that they won't bother to fix it is giving them a bad(worse) reputation that they only care about cloud customers. The effort to remove that restriction is minimal and would make the product more robust. Also, having customers relabel their drives just to fix their broken product is not a sufficient resolution either.

It is completely insane that we still can't use the A and B designators. But thanks JohnRellis for the idea to add a mount point. That is a clean solution.