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Drive letters are not available for assigning to unallocated space

Anonymous
2018-12-07T08:40:57+00:00

Hi,

I have the following odd situation...

Introduction:

I did a clean install of Windows 10 Pro on one of my PC's. I used the iso of v1709 (Windows 10 Fall 2017) because that was the latest iso I had available on CD. In the mean time the PC upgraded to v1803 (Windows 10 Spring 2018).

The PC has one SSD and one HDD, I installed Windows 10 on the SSD. During the install I removed all existing partitions.

Odd situation:

After the clean install I wanted to assign drive letter D to the unallocated HDD partition within Disk Management, but drive letters D, E, F, G, H are not available within Disk Management. When I checked in Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices these letters have been assigned already while no USB or other devices are connected. Within Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices I removed D, E, F, G, H because I was sure these should not be there. After a reboot I checked the registry and they were back?!?

Question:

Does anyone know why device D, E, F, G, H appear in the registry. I want to assign D to my HDD because that's my PC best practice: C for Windows and D for user data.

Thanks in advance,

SJW

***Original title: Windows 10 - drive letters not available***

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Devices and drivers

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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  1. Anonymous
    2018-12-08T05:27:22+00:00

    Hello Sjoerd,

    Thank you for writing to Microsoft Community Forums.

    The reason the drive letters are not available to assign are because they might have been assigned to devices which are removed or hidden. I suggest you to check for any hidden devices and remove them to assign the missing drive letters.

    Follow the steps mentioned below to check for the hidden or removed devices.

    1. Press Windows key + R. This will open Run. Alternatively, you can go to Start and search for Run.
    2. In Run dialog box, type devmgmt.msc and hit enter.
    3. Click on the view tab at the top left hand corner.
    4. Now select View hidden devices.
    5. Now look for the hidden devices under storage volumes and portable devices.
    6. Right click on the hidden devices and click on uninstall.
    7. Restart the PC.

    After restarting the PC, try assigning the drive letter to the unallocated drive and check if the drive letters D, E, F, G, and H appears.

    Hope it helps.

    Regards,

    Prakhar Khare

    Microsoft Community – Moderator

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