Windows 10: Drive Letter on USB extenal Drive auto-changed with W10 update ... old letter now unavailable

Hello. I just upgraded from Win7 to Win10 (1903) on a Dell Vostro 2520 laptop (i3, 8GB, 64-bit). Boot is UEFI. All drivers are up-to-date.

I have admin privileges.


Storage is an internal Crucial SSD [C:] and an external Seagate 2TB USB drive, which was set to Drive [E:]

with many, many apps linked to that letter.

Now Windows has somehow re-assigned the Seagate external to Drive [F:].


Here's how I've tried and was unable to reset the drive back to [E:] ...


1) Tried Win DiskMgmt, MiniTool Partition Wizard, and EaseUS Partition Master to change back the letter on the external Seagate,

but all of these omit letter [E:] as a choice for re-assignment! (Other than my internal system drive [C:], there are no other drives.)


2) Tried powering down, removing the external cable, powering up, and reinserting the cable.

The drive still shows as [F:], and [E:] is still omitted as a choice for re-assignment from the utilities mentioned above.

Something seems to be "reserving" letter [E:], but I can't find out what/why. Any thoughts?

:)

 

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.

 

Windows 10 changing USB port drive letters

Hi Joseph,

Thank you for posting your query in Microsoft Community.

I understand the inconvenience you are facing currently.

I would appreciate if you can provide us the following information to help us understand the issue better.

• Since when are you facing this issue?
• Did you make any changes in prior to this issue?

I would like to inform you that the issue might have occurred due to some changes made to your computer.

I suggest you to try changing the drive letter of the drive and check if it helps.

Follow the steps to change the drive letter:

• Press Windows + X keys and click on Disk Management.
• Right click on the external drive and click on Change Drive letter and paths.
• Click on Change the button.
• Under Assign the following Drive letter, select the desired drive letter.
• Click Ok to save changes.

Hope the information helps. Please let us know if the issue persist and we will be happy to assist you further.

 

changing drive letter

Hi Cathie,

Thank you for posting your query in Microsoft Community.

I understand the inconvenience caused. I will be glad to assist you with this.

The drive letters change automatically and alphabetically depending on the number of drives available in the computer. For example, if you connect another USB or drive to the computer, it would be named as I. This must be the reason why the letter got changed
to H.

To better assist you, do let us know if there is already a G drive in the file explorer.

If not, you do have the option to change the drive letter through disk management according to your preference. Follow the steps below:

1. Press Windows key + R to open the run command.

2. Type diskmgmt.msc and press enter to open disk management.

3. On the left hand side of the window, right click on the "H" drive and select "change drive letter and path".

4. Click "change" and assign the preferred drive letter from the drop down list.

5. Save the changes and restart the computer if necessary.

Hope this helps.

Let us know if you need further assistance. We will be glad to help.