Windows 10: Dislk drive letter not available

I have just upgraded to WIN 11 on my desktop PC. Previously, I had used Disk Management to change an external drive to "H". Now, even if I move this drive to different usb portals, it is renamed "G". So I again used Disk Management to try change it back only to find that "H" is not available because it is no longer on the drop down list. And I know this drive is the one to which I assigned "H" because it has a big sticker on it with that letter and contains all my photoshop files which were on "H". This causes a huge problem because my Photoshop catalogue is linked to files on "H" drive and n

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Drive Letters not available

Hi,

Thank you for posting your query in Microsoft Community.

Sorry for the inconvenience caused.

If the letter E is not available it may be because it’s being used by any other drives. we can see from the screenshot which you have provided that the E: drive is used by DVD/CD-ROM.

If you want to assign E to Another drive you may have to assign DVD drive to any other letter which will free up the Alphabet E.

Please follow the steps to change the drive letter:

1.Right click on the start button and select Disk management.

2.Right click on the drive which you want to rename and select change drive letter and paths.

3.select the drive from the list and press apply and ok.


Hope the above information helps. Reply with necessary information and the result to help you further. Thank you.

 

Drive letters are not available for assigning to unallocated space

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

 

help. USB drive isn't assigned a drive letter.

Any usb flash drive I plug into my computer isn't assigned a drive letter. The physical drive shows in the "safely remove hardware" but it doesnt show up in disk management. I have tried to populate the volume thru the safely remove hardware properties window and it does pop up in the list but it doesn't stay there. This isn't a format or assign a letter problem. It's more complicated then that. Maybe one of the services needed for usb drive management was disabled? Suggestions needed. btw external usb harddrives work fine.