Phantom drives after connecting external drive from a desktop

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[funhitman]

Greetings!

I have a couple of drives that are showing up in File Explorer now after connecting a HD from a desktop that I had put into an external case.  That external drive was partitioned and all the partitions showed up in File Explorer.  I disconnected the external HD, but I’m still seeing drives C (my local drive), D (Removable, empty), and E (Removable, empty).  I’ve gone into Disk Management and changed D and E to Y and Z, but would love to delete them instead. Before connecting that external drive, a flash drive would automatically get the D drive assignment, and connecting additional flash drives would get the next letter (naturally).  Am I stuck with those two phantom drives now?

Additional information on D and E drives – General tab shows Location as “on USB Mass Storage Device”, and Volumes tab shows the Partition style as MBR; D’s Status is “Healthy (EFI System Partition),” and E’s Status is “Healthy (Recovery Partition).”  My laptop does not access either of these drives.

Edit:  I forgot to add – I’m on Windows 11 22H2.

• This topic was modified 1 year ago by funhitman.

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If you really want to “delete” these drive letters, in the same location you used to change the letters, you can select “remove”. But know this, if you ever need to access those drives, Windows won’t see them unless you add a letter.

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Thanks for all the suggestions!

PL1, just for clarification, if I removed that drive and later on I inserted a flash drive and the system assigns it to that removed drive, are you saying that I won’t see it in Explorer until I add it back?

Drcard, when I enter your suggested command line, I get the message, “The network connection could not be found.”

OldNavyGuy, I ran the first two command lines and the drives are gone.  What’s the purpose of the mountvol /R command line?

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Try the following –

Open an elevated Command prompt (Run as administrator).

Run mountvol Y: /D

Run mountvol Z: /D

Failing that…

Run mountvol  /R

 

 

 

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funhitman

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funhitman wrote:

I’ve gone into Disk Management and changed D and E to Y and Z, but would love to delete them instead.

 Open an Administrator Command Prompt by opening a Run box (WinKey + R), enter cmd, press the Ctrl + Shift + Enter keys at the same time, and click Yes to the UAC query box that opens.
 Enter the following command replacing the drive letter (Z) with the drive letter of your drive and press the Enter key.

net use /del Z:

 Open File Explorer and the drive should be gone. Repeat for the Y: drive. Be sure to close the Command Prompt window.

Works for Windows 7 thru 10 and should work for Windows 11.

HTH, Dana:))

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satrow

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funhitman wrote:

PL1, just for clarification, if I removed that drive and later on I inserted a flash drive and the system assigns it to that removed drive, are you saying that I won’t see it in Explorer until I add it back?

It assigns no drive letter to a specific hardware device. If the flash drive you insert was not there when you removed the letter, it should create a new letter for that flash drive. It’s easy enough to test. You can always add a drive letter (in the same location) if it does not show up.

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funhitman

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BTDT and discovered this little tidbit of info that’s help me resolve the same problem several times.

Info for all storage devices (both fixed and removable) that have ever been connected to a PC and viewable via Explorer is saved in the registry at the following location.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

Drive letters that are currently in use (“assigned” to a device) appear at the bottom of the list like this:

\DosDevices\Z:

With a Data field containing the device specific info for that drive letter.

To remove a particular drive letter+device combo (regardless of whether it’s actually connected to your PC or not), simply delete the entry for that drive letter.

Also, to ensure USB devices automatically get assigned the next available drive letter, Automount must be enabled (Diskpart > Automount displays its status).

BTW, you must reboot the PC for any changes to take effect.

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LaRuca, funhitman, satrow

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funhitman wrote:

OldNavyGuy, I ran the first two command lines and the drives are gone. What’s the purpose of the mountvol /R command line?

Sometimes, mountvol <Drive Letter> /D does not work.

mountvol /R will remove all mount points (including drive letters) for devices that are no longer connected to the system.

 

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funhitman

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One very important factor to consider if you use mountvol /R.

As pointed out by @OldNavyGuy, it removes all mount points for devices that aren’t actually in use when you run it which means Windows has now “forgotten” all the removable devices not currently connected to your PC and any drive letters you may have assigned them!

That means the next time you attach one of those devices, it’ll get assigned an “automount” drive letter (i.e. the next unused drive letter).

While that won’t really matter if it’s a device you use for “generic” storage, if you have any programs that are setup to look for a specific drive letter when they run, especially scheduled tasks like drive backups, it can be a real PITA to determine exactly which drive letter belongs to which removable device (BTDT, it was NOT pretty!)

Because I had this happen to me a few time, I now give each of those type of devices specific Drive Labels so I know exactly what each one is being used for and can reassign it the correct drive letter if things get messed up.

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funhitman, satrow

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funhitman wrote:

Drcard, when I enter your suggested command line, I get the message, “The network connection could not be found.”

I’m very sorry about that and I’m not surprised it didn’t work.  Hastily writing the post I wrote the command wrong.  For the record, the correct command is:

net use Z: /delete

I am glad you got it fixed, and thanks to ONG for posting those commands.

 

HTH, Dana:))

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