Windows 10: Computer Assigned A False Drive Letter - Cannot Access External Hard-D

Hi. Here's a screen shot.

Woke up and fired up computer this morning.

Went to access my External Hard-Drive.

I have several of these, and the one I needed has been assigned drive letter G:

Was showing up as 'I' and not letting me access.

Upon closer look it appears some 'CD' drive showing up out of nowhere assigned itself to 'G' now.

I put a disc into the 'D:' drive and that shows up when I do.

But I can't change this new 'CD' drive that's showing up as 'G' in explorer, because it doesn't show up in disc manager where we can reassign new drive letters.

Anybody know how to over-come this?

:)

 

Windows 10 update hides disk

Hi,

To better assist you regarding your concern, we would like to ask some questions:

• Are you referring to an external hard disk drive or an internal hard disk drive?
• Are you receiving an error message when you are trying to access it?
• Have you checked if there is a letter assigned to your hard disk drive?

If you are referring to an internal hard disk drive, kindly check if there is a letter assigned to it. If there is none, kindly assign a letter. It can be that there is no letter assigned to the second hard disk drive that is causing it to be read as unknown
and cannot be accessed. To do so, follow the steps below:

• Open File Explorer.
• Right-click on This PC.
• Click Manage.
• Click Disk Management.
• Right-click on your second hard disk drive.
• Click Change Drive Letter
  and Paths.
• Click Add.
• Click Assign the following drive letter.
• Choose the letter you want.
• Click OK.

By then, your hard disk drive should now have a drive letter and check if you can now access it.

Let us know how it goes.

 

How do I get my other computer harddrive to be accessed as an external drive

I have 1TB hard drive which used to run windows 10 with UEFI boot. I tried connecting it as an external drive to another computer which runs win 10 with UEFI as well, but I cannot access the files in it.

The external drive shows up in device manager and in disk managements as GPT partition. But cannot assign drive to it, as its greyed out. Tried using Diskpart to assign a drive letter to it but it did not allow me. I read something online that it may be
protected due to UEFI etc and most solutions required reformating. I would like to remove some files from it before doing a reformat.

Is there anyway I can access the data on the hard drive at all?

 

Hello Jackson, *Smile

You might see if you may be able to change the drive letters for them using Option Four in the tutorial below via Registry Editor.

*Arrow Change and Assign Drive Letter in Windows 10 Hardware Drivers Tutorials

 

OS assigns a letter "On the fly", first available letter is applied and it's not permanent. That applies to built in drives as well as removable ones. You cold try this program and see if it helps you: Download USB Drive Letter Manager (USBDLM) - MajorGeeks

 

If you opened an ISO image in Windows, it would create a temporary Virtual CD drive to view the contents. If you no longer need this, right click the Virtual CD drive and choose Eject. The Temporary CD drive should disappear.
Now back in Disk Management, you can choose whichever drive letter you want by right clicking a drive and choose Change Drive Letters or Paths. If a drive letter is taken, choose the next available drive letter for that drive, this will free up the drive letter you want for the drive you want to have for that drive letter, and change the drive letter of the drive you want to change to the now available drive letter. It is always best to choose drive letters lower in the alphabet. When you assign the drive letter here, it should stay even it if is an external drive.