I’ve got this Maxtor 320GB USB external drive that I use to store just about everything on that’s not a program or crucial for my laptop to run. The problem is when I plug it in my computer the AutoPlay routine always tries to scan the entire contents of the drive, which is entirely unnecessary.

I’m also prompted each time after the AutoPlay scan completes to then choose what action I’d like to take on the drive since it contains more than one type of digital content.

So, here’s my question. How can I edit the autorun.inf file to tell it to never scan when I plug-in the drive. It would really be nice of the "Take no action" selection would be remembered.

Image: Snagit of Windows OS features and autorun.inf file on my machine

I’m trying to get things back online and organized on my laptop for working with clients. One of the things I used to do is have many of the frequently used files for clients set to be available offline when I’m disconnected from our network.

The problem was that I quickly ran out of available free space on my hard drive to maintain all the files I may need along with those programs and options that are run locally from the machine all the time.

Here’s my question, can I easily redirect and RELY on moving my default offline files location to my portable, Western Digital 250GB USB drive?

Obviously this is my work machine and it needs to be reliable and no major unexpected issues arise when I’m not expecting them.