How can I remove duplicate drive letters in Windows 11?

Question

I used to have my computer backing up to Drive E External which is a G-Drive Brand External Drive. After installing windows 11, I eventually noticed it was no longer showing in MY COMPUTER. Today I checked my backup software and noticed it is no longer backing up to that drive.

The way I found out about this is I stuck in a USB stick and noted it said Drive E - Lexar (Formerly my External Drive) and I thought that strange. Then I found out I I could not safely eject the USB stick and my software and discovered my software was in the process of backing up my entire computer onto that little stick so I halted that process. I then also noted that my drive E was listed twice in Microsoft Explorer.

When I put in a USB stick, they both change to the STICK NAME i.e. E - Lexar instead of E - G-Drive.

I looked into this and learned I could rename Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\NameSpace\DelegateFolders{F5FB2C77-0E2F-4A16-A381-3E560C68BC83} to Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\NameSpace\DelegateFolders{F5FB2C77-0E2F-4A16-A381-3E560C68BC83}.old and that would solve the problem, but that is for Windows 10.

But then I found out I have two Namespace directories - NAMESPACE and NameSpace_36354489 and both contain multiple folders and a DELEGATE folder.

To complicate matters, my external drive is a G-Drive, so I really should have delegated that to G not E just to simplify. Can it be changed?

Any smart humans here that can guide me through a fix on this?

Addendum. I just plugged in the stick again and got this, so I will rename External G-Drive (E) to External G-Drive (G) for Clarity, but I still have it showing up twice.

UPDATE - I renamed the External Drive and now get this. The Registry still looks the same, 2ith two DELEGATE FOLDERS files so that seems to be the big problem.

Answer 1

You can change the external drive letter using Disk Management. Select the partition (or if the external drive has Windows installed, the "C" partition), right click and choose "Change Drive Letter and Paths". If it is a system disk you can change the drive letter from C to any other unused drive letter and it will not affect it's ability to boot. I experimented with this today as Windows File Explorer was not seeing some of my external USB drives. In each case the external drive either had no drive letter or had been assigned one that was already being used by the machine I was trying to read it with.

If your external storage drive has multiple partitions/volumes, I would assume you would need give each one a letter or change the letter of any of them that uses a letter already in use by the system or they will be unseen by File Exporer.

Answer 2

Fun fact:

The registry patch didn't work anymore after upgrading to 25300, I had to apply it again.

No need to restart Explorer, the change can be seen live if Explorer is open. 😁

edit:

I must admit that I like it better without the duplicate. 👍

I will be using the patch after every update from now on.

Answer 3

It goes back to 2017. 😎

how can I remove a duplicate drives in navigation pane - Microsoft Community

Thank you fg2001. I think in Windows 11 there is no "More Details" section. Only "Details" but there doesn't appear to be any tabs there at all, such as a GENERAL tab, nor File/Windows Explorer entry.

Answer 4

It goes back to 2017. 😎

how can I remove a duplicate drives in navigation pane - Microsoft Community

You are showing the wrong location WOW6432Node, that is not where you should look. 😎 That was for Windows 10.

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\NameSpace\DelegateFolders{F5FB2C77-0E2F-4A16-A381-3E560C68BC83}

Just renaming the DelegateFolders key to something else eliminates the duplication of the drive letter.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\NameSpace\DelegateFolders

If you want to change the drive letter, use Disk Management

Answer 5

I tried both methods indicated at the link provided. Neither work on Windows 11. apparently.

YW

Strange it doesn't work for you, maybe the tinkering with drives names has something to do with it. 🤷‍♂️

The patch is very basic, adds a bracket to {F5FB2C77-0E2F-4A16-A381-3E560C68BC83}]

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