Windows 10: My hard drive wasnt there, it had been replaced by Local Disk F and now my file explorer...

I woke up to day and my second hard drive was not there, but it had been replaced by something called Local Disk F: and now for some reason my file explorer takes a very long time to load, when I double click on it, it doesn’t open and crashes my file explorer and when I open disk management and try to open the local disk f it says connecting to virtual disk service but doesn’t connect, can someone help me?

:)

 

External hard drive is showing up as local disk drive

Hi,



Thank you for writing to Microsoft Community Forums.



As you have mentioned that the external hard drive is showing as local disk drive instead of a USB drive, it is because the file format for the external hard drive is same as the internal hard drive and that’s why it is showing
up as a local disk drive and not a USB drive.



Also, since you are facing issues while changing the drive letter of the drive, for further clarity on the issue and to guide you accordingly, respond to the questions listed below:

1. What is the make and model of the hard drive?
   
2. Were you able to save or create a file on the hard drive previously?
   
3. What happens when you try to copy and paste the data from the hard drive?
   
4. What was the result of check disk performed on the drive?
   

Since you are receiving the access denied error, I would suggest you to check if the user has appropriate permissions to read/write data on the external hard drive. Refer the article

"Access Denied" or other errors when you access or work with files and folders in Windows, refer the section
I cannot access, change, save, or delete files and folders.



Note:
The above article applies to Windows 10 also.



Please get back to us with the above information to assist you further with the issue.



We await your response.



Regards,

Prakhar Khare

Microsoft Community – Moderator

 

Unknown Local Drive F

I began getting an error message saying the hard drive is low on disk space so I looked at disk management and noted that there is an F drive partition that I have no idea where it came from or how to deal with it. When I look at the drive in File Explorer
it says the folder is empty, but disk manager indicates the drive is 91% full. Any suggestions on how to get things going again? Thanks, Sam

 

local disk f


This looks like the F: drive is the EFI partition having a size of 300MB. Open Admin Command (Win+X->Command Prompt (Admin)) and type:
diskpart
select disk 0
list partition =====> take a note of the partition # having 300MB. My guess is partition 2
select partition # =====> replace # with the number in step above
remove =====> remove the drive letter
exit

This should remove the drive letter and won't show up in "This PC"

P.S do not delete this partition, you won't be able to boot.