Windows 10: Unable to assign drive letters after Win10 Upgrade

Hey everyone,

This seems like a cool place with a lot of people that might be able to help me out.

I tried the Windows 10 upgrade when it first came out and immediately went back to 8.1 when I couldn't get a single one of my internal SATA hard drives to mount.. I have 5 of them, and I just wasn't about to mess with that when 8.1 had no problems at all. Now I have tried it again and the same problem is happening. I want to see if I can figure it out this time. I am using the latest SATA and Chipset drivers for Win10 64 bit from Gigabyte's Website (I am using a Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H Rev. 1.1.

I am "testing" Win10 using a bootable clone of my main SSD (that still has 8.1 on it) and I upgraded it to 10 just to mess with so I can figure out this ridiculous problem. *Sad

My problem is that all of my internal SATA hard drives (with the exception of the system drive) cannot be assigned a drive letter in Disk Management. They show as healthy NTFS partitions but I get 1 of 2 different errors when I click on "Change Drive letters and Paths":

1. "Virtual Disk Manager: The System cannot find the file specified."

2 "Disk Management: The operation filed to complete because the Disk Management Console view is not up-to date. Refresh the view by using the refresh task. If the problem persists close the Disk Management console, then restart disk management or restart the computer" Hint: none of the recommended fixes in the error message change anything.

I HAVE been able to assign the partitions a letter and mount them using a third party disk manager called "MiniTool Partition Wizard". It lets me mount the partitions and it works! ..However, if I restart the computer, I am back to square one and have to manually assign each drive letter for each partition every time.

This is easily the worst experience I have ever had upgrading an OS, and one of the most mind boggling issues I have had with Windows in general. I really like Windows 10 and want to keep using it but half of my hard drives being un-mountable is a complete deal breaker right now. *Mad

:)

 

Windows 10 doesn't recognise DOS drive

The DOS partition already had a drive letter assigned (visible in XP, and Win7) but Win10 update ignored this. Assigning a letter in Win10 worked, so many thanks.

 

Windows 10 doesn't assign letter for 2nd partition

I've formatted external USB drive (4TB) on Windows 7, creating 2 partitions (NTFS and exFAT).

When I plug this drive to Win7, all partitions are mount correctly and drive letters are assigned.

But when plug the same disk to Win10, drive letter is automatically assigned only to the first partition. The second partition is not visible in explorer till I assign letter manually. I thought that issue is related to conflicting drives with the same letter,
but it also happens when there are no any conflicting drives...

Is it some Win10 limitation? Why the second partition doesn't receive drive letter automatically?

 

Please post a screen shot of Disk Management and also the result of diskpart below.
Open Admin command prompt and type:

• diskpart
• list disk

 

Here are the pictures. The drive that has no partition is one that I messed up while tinkering and trying to figure this out. Good thing its backed up.. haha.

Also here is the link to the 3rd party software I was able to get the drives to mount temporarily (until restart)
MiniTool Partition Wizard | Best partition magic alternative for Windows PC and Server

 

I saw disk 1 and 4 are the same. Did you clone them ? Also noticed that you have efi system partition on disk 0, 1, 3 & 4. I assume disk 0 is your Windows 10 OS disk, am i correct ?

Yes, I also have Mini tool and familiar with it.

 

Disk 0 is indeed the OS drive.

1 and 4 are the same make/model/size of drive, but they are totally different partitions. 1 has sample libraries on it for virtual instruments, and the other has a bunch of my older Pro Tools sessions on it. The more drives, the merrier for Pro Audio work.

I have often wondered why I need the EFI system partition on all of my data drives that don't have a boot loader for an OS or anything important... Can they be deleted? Could that be part of the problem? I much prefer alot of the 3rd party partition management software to the stock windows one, but I think most of these drives were likely formatted with the windows one. It also seems that the Windows one is "ground zero" for everything regarding assigning permanent drive letters. I have been working on getting all of my drives converted to GPT rather than MBR too.

There are actually a few drives that aren't even plugged in right now.. (2 SSDs one with Mac OSX that I don't use much anymore and my main one with Win 8.1 aren't even hooked up while I mess with Win 10)

Any ideas what might be causing so many issues with Windows Disk Management?

- Sam

 

Let's work on disk 1 first. Did you make a backup on this disk ? If yes, can we wipe it out and re-initialize it ?
FYI, with disk < 2GB in capacity, there's no need to convert it to GPT.

 

I would rather not wipe any of the disks that are in the screenshots. I have some other drives laying around that I could try and format to see if they can be assigned a permanent drive letter though. That is a good idea. It would at least rule out whether it is a SATA or Chipset driver issue.

 

OK. That's fine. If there's no OS on those disk then the EFI System partition should not be there. Yes, you can delete it, then assign a letter for partition 2.Open Admin command prompt, type:

• diskpart
• select disk 1
• select partition 1
• delete partition override
• select partition 2
• assign letter=Z
• exit

If it works, do the same for other disks.

 

I tried the instructions you sent. Its the same error that was popping up in the GUI Disk Management. *Sad

Both of the letters I tried were free/open letters to give a disk.

The weirdness continues. I feel like I should install Windows 10 from scratch, but I don't have a DVD, or ISO to put on a USB flash drive for it.

 

On disk 1. Since you deleted the EFI System partition and now if you go back and list the partition, there's should be only 1 partition.
Try:

• diskpart
• select disk 1
• list partition ====> you will now have only one partition on disk 1
• select partition 1
• set id=07 override ====> To set the partition as basic data disk.
• assign letter=H ====> or any available letter.
• exit

 

Tried that set of instructions and it still says "The system cannot find the file specified"

*Sad

Thank you for your help so far. This is way farther than I would have gotten on my own.

- Sam

 

My bad. did not realize your disk 1 is GPT disk.
Instead of set id=07 override
use:
set id=ebd0a0a2-b9e5-4433-87c0-68b6b72699c7 override
assign letter=H

EDIT: You can copy the lines above and paste to the command prompt to make sure all numbers are correct.

 

Oh my goodness... that worked!!!

The drive is now mounted and has a drive letter and shows in explorer!

So now what? Go ahead and do that to the other drives? I am going to try and restart the computer and see if that drive keeps its letter designation. If it does then I think my problem is solved! I still don't understand why Disk Management keeps saying "The system cannot find the file specified"... really odd