external drive not formatted when drive letter changed

Had 2 USB external HDD connected. XP (sp2) assigned 1 HDD to E: and the other to H:

I moved the contents of E: to H: so E: was now empty. Removed HDD that was E: and rebooted computer.

E: was gone but H: was still there and I could read/modify/delete/copy/... the files on H:

Disk manager showed H: as NTFS - Then I reassigned the H: to E: and rebooted.

E: shows up but clicking on it brings up the "drive not formatted" dialog box and disk manager says RAW.

Why can it be read as drive H: but not as drive E: -

Please make it stop ;-)

 

It Works Now

Changed USB HDD back to H: and rebooted - now even H: showed unformatted.

Did Safely Remove USB routine and Unplugged USB HDD. After plugging it back in, the operating system accepted it as E:

Go figure