Hardware Drivers :: Hard Drive Not Allow To Change Correct Drive Letter
Mar 5, 2013
I'm booting off my SSD which is drive C: and I have games and programs on an extra hard drive which was origanally drive H: but after a restart it switched to I: and when I go into Disk Management to change it Drive H: isn't there.
I've installed Windows 8 starting the installer from Windows 8 RP and I've just noticed that it picked up the drive letters from the old system. Now my system drive is Y instead of C , because in the old system that partition was Y. If I try to change the drive letter in the Drive Management it gives an error. how to change system drive letter in Windows 8 RTM?
I tried to change the drive letter because it wont appear, but it didnt work. I have tried the CMD method with the volumes but the volume did not show up. All I know is that its a G-Technology hard drive. I tried formatting it to NTFS but that wont work. Basically I tried everything and nothing works. P.S The drive is Disk1...
I'm just going through the process of personalizing a new Inspiron 14z with Windows 8. The one thing that has me stumped are all the partitions that ship installed on the drive, due to a combination of everything being different on Win8, Dell doing things their own way, and GPT formatting. Generally I would like to know what the heck all those partitions are for, but it's fine if that will be a slow learning process. Specifically and immediately, I need to change the drive letter assigned to the "WINRETOOLS" partition. Currently it's D:, and the problem is that for 10 years I've been using D: as my data partition, and quite a number of applications, configurations, settings, etc. assume that all my files are on D:. For instance, by having all my music on D:, I can sync iTunes library and preference files between machines, and all ratings and playlists match from one machine to the next. Same thing for my photos. Same thing for a bunch of utilities like FTP consoles, sync utilities...
In a prior version of Windows, I would just go into Disk Management, right click the partition in question, assign a different drive letter, and job done. On my machine, the 2GB WINRETOOL partition doesn't even show as having a drive letter in Disk Management, despite the fact that it's D: in Win Explorer. Additionally, the only right click option is "help". I've taken that option, and, despite its aspirations, it's not useful.
How can I change that drive letter to something else? Should WINRETOOLS even have a drive letter in Explorer (some posts I've seen indicate that it should be hidden)? If I do manage to change the drive letter, will that break its function, whatever that is?
My machine has a 500GB spinning disk, which has all the aforementioned partitions. I've shrunk the C: partition to 80GB, in preparation for creating a data partition. I have not yet formatted the unassigned space as I would like to solve this WINRETOOLS thing first. Finally, there is a 32GB SSD that I've set up as an Intel Smart Response cache, and it's no longer visible to the OS.
My C: is a SSD Id like to have back as one disc, one partition..
The 101 mb 'unallocated' It was previously listed as " reserved system protected drive" I removed and formatted its 101 mb...back to empty, unallocated, can I lose that partition??
It shows up under disc management as a part of c...but really has no drive letter at all it just shows as C:
I have a windows to go installation in a large external hdd, so I have made a second partition to use as data storage.
Now, when I insert the disk on my "normal" windows installation I would expect the data partition to be available... Instead I have to assign a letter to be able to use it.
The disk appears to be online and once assigned a letter you can unplug it and plug it again without having to do the letter assignment again.
BUT, every time I restart the pc I have to do it all over again.
This morning, my laptop wouldn't boot and I got a message saying I needed to use the recovery disk to fix the problem. A little investigating using the command prompt from that disk revealed my system and data partitions had no drive letter assigned to them. A little work with Diskpart fixed that but left me wondering what would have caused them to disappear.
That is, I can allocate it one through drive management but it still doesn't show next switch on in My Computer, so I must go in an allocate it one. Otherwise it works fine. Bit tedious after a while.
Do I have to reformat it completely to regain auto allocation of a letter?
Used to be fine, but not now. A USB 3.0 Toshiba 500 gig external drive (sealed unit) doesn't have this problem.
After last "patch-tuesday" my Windows 8.1 don't assign drive letters to hotswaped HDD's and USB keys.
When starting my backupdrive (eSATA), it is now without a drive letter, I can give it one though in disk-management, but before last tuesday, it was given a letter automatic. Same problem when I connect an USB-HDD or an USB-stick.
Is there a way to get back "autoassign of a drive letter"? (don't know the correct word for this function in English).
I have just bought a 4TB external USB 3.0 hard drive. The plan is to copy all of the data from my current internal 2TB drive to the 4TB, then I'm going to crack the case of the external hard drive open, take the drive out, and put it in my PC to replace the 2TB drive that's in there now (which I know will void the warranty). This isn't going to be a boot drive as I have an SSD for that.
I had read that Windows does not support large drives of this size and that it would show up as 2 partitions, so I was prepared to convert the drive to GPT in order to have 1 large partition. However, I connected the drive up to my Windows 8.1 machine and it shows as 1 large partition of 3.63TB, which is about what I expected.
Does this mean I don't have to convert the drive after all? Can I do what I'm planning to do and everything will work fine? Or do I need to convert it to GPT before I copy all of my data over and if so, how do I do that exactly?
I recently discovered that one of my drives has been at 100% activity with no data being read or written. This particular drive is used for virtual instruments and samples for music. I've never had issues before, but I found it odd that loading projects took an insane amount of time to load, which lead me to check the disk usage of this particular drive.
Current response time spikes into the tens of thousands. Again, nothing is being written or read. If I open the drive, I can see all my files, but the drive never seems to stop "searching". I've attatched a picture below:
I have a 2TB Western Digital My Book Essentials, it's filled with tons of old photos, movies, docs, games, and I'm scared to think of what else. The SATA to USB connector broke on it, so I took the drive apart and put it inside my computer. I opened up device manager because it wasn't showing up automatically and the 2TB is showing up as unallocated, I'm freaking out now because I'm scared the data was somehow deleted.What do I do?
edit: I realize also this isn't directly related to Windows 8 (besides the fact it's the OS I'm on), but I don't know where else to post it. I'd also like to say that I had a really deep feeling the drive was going to break continually for about two weeks before it happened, so if you have a similar feeling about something, don't ignore it!
I just installed Win 8 last night and everything seemed fine before I turned off the computer. Now, I'm a student and I work a lot from my USB/HD. I have both my usb and HD connected to the computer but the computer doesn't read them now.
My portable hard drive stops showing up all of a sudden. It is connected to a USB hub. When I go to 'Disk Management' in 'Computer Management', the hard drive shows up as Unknown - Not Initialised. Also this hard drive works while not using the USB hub, and the USB hub works as well with other devices.
I built my computer a couple weeks ago and am running windows 8.1. I currently have a 128gb SSD and a 1tb internal hard drive (WD Caviar Blue) I obviously used the ssd to boot windows and currently windows is detecting my 1tb hard drive but it is not usable. I have tried diskpart commands to clean and format and I keep getting the error message "DiskPart has encountered an error: The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error". The hard drive was brand new and cables are fine. This is what everything looks like..
Is there a way I can back up my files from my 2tb WD My Passport External Hard Drive? I have a lot of files on there which I want to back up and convert to NTFS.
I am having a little trouble with windows disk management. I'm running a custom built rig with a 250GB SSD for OS & Programs, and a 2TB HDD for everything else. The hard drive was previously partitioned however I recently removed these partitions and Extended the main volume to fill the drive, however it is showing up as 3 distinct volumes in disk management (See attached screenshot). They're also Green from some reason and the disk is showing as a 'Dynamic' disk, which I don't remember changing.
Seagate 2TB drive mounted in a Thermaltake, Max 5 enclosure. The drive does not show in Windows 8. Does show when running Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc) but shows as "Unallocated" without a drive letter. If run the Seagate drive tools, it shows up as unallocated, with drive letter "C". But there is obviously already a drive "C".
Disk Management does not present a means by which to assign a drive letter
I have a Simpletech Simpledrive External Hard drive. It works on my desktop running xp. When I connect to my Asus N56DP Laptop, I hear the binging and all. But I do not see it in my control panel. I can see it in the device manager. Not in Disc MAnagement. Is there something I can do to get it to install and be accessible? I have some race car pictures I would like to post to Facebook.
a friend of mine recently brought me a notebook,Medion AKOYA 99380(s6214t). After booting and using notebook for some time,computer reported a Hard Drive error.It said:"Windows detected a hard disk problem. Back up your files immediately to prevent information loss, and then contact computer manufacturer to determine if you need to repair or replace the disk."
The HDD is pretty new and it didn't seem to have any hardware issues. However,I did a clean instal of Windows 8.1 on the notebook(normally I installed Windows on the 64GB SD Card located in the "tablet" part of the notebook,so that way a person using it can use it as a tablet,too). Everything seemed to work fine, no HDD errors from Windows etc.,but then I opened My Computer and second Hard Drive wasn't there.I thought that it's a Drive Letter problem so I went into Disk Management however it did not solve the issue.
Then I tried everything(re-formatting,changing from NTFS to other formats etc.) but it did not seem to work.But all of sudden,after doing something, I don't really remember what I did that made the Computer see it, but it finally worked,so I just started testing everything. And after I used it as a tablet only for a while,I plugged that part in the notebook again and then Windows gave me an option to Update and Restart. I was a bit afraid of how it will turn out,so I wanted to shut down and turn on for a couple of times before updating, just to see if it will cause any issues. When I was sure that it worked perfect before the update, I clicked the option to update.
After the update was finished,Windows ran extremely slow and it detected my second HDD, however not the way it should.It only said "Local Disk (D: ) but I could not access and it didn't show how much memory on it was used. I re-assigned a letter to it after a format,but it did not work. Then I shut down the notebook,pull the second hard drive out,connect it to computer with usb so windows sees it as an external hard drive,and bam,everything worked. I don't think that the HDD is the problem,nor the SATA connectors,it's most likely that the motherboards driver need an update. However,when I checked for it's name,it said "Medion AKOYA s6124t". I tried all the downloads from Medion's page,but no succes in finding a proper driver.
Problem : Cannot Eject any Portable Hard Drive with Safely Remove Hardware Window. My Portable HD didn't show on Safely Remove Hardware windows, so I cant eject them.
I know there is good software out there to clone/image my hard drive and restore it to a new SSD drive. I'm just wondering though, since my laptop is brand new, I made a full recovery to a USB drive and included the OEM recovery partition.
Couldn't I just swap out the old HDD with the new SSD and boot with the recovery stick and do a full recovery back to the new SSD?
Also, however I do this, recover or image backup/restore, do I need to do some type of SSD alignment? I can't find a clear answer on that.
I have an external harddrive on a USB2 port that I have been using for ages without problems. Yesterday it just stopped being accessible for no apparent reason. The machine "sees" it (as the F drive) but can't access it. If I try to double click on the F drive the machine takes aaaaaages (green "busy bar" slowly tracking) and then I eventually get an error that says "F: is not accessible" - as per this image:
So I assumed the drive had died. But to test that, I plugged it into my g/f's old XP machine and it accessed the drive with no problems whatsoever!
The only other thing I could think to try was to look in disc management. But even though the is an F drive showing in explorer (as per the above image)... it doesn't even show up in disc management!
So, in exasperation, I did a "refresh" of my system. A bit of a drastic step, but I thought maybe it was time for a cleanup anyway. But, after the refresh was done... STILL the same problem! Exactly as per the above images, the machine "sees" the F drive but nothing is accessible.
I am connecting a 640GB Samsung G2 Portable External Hard Drive to my HP Pavilion 15 Laptop.
The external hard drive works on other desktop and laptop computers here at work, but when connected to the HP Pavilion (Windows 8.1 OS) it shows up as a Local Disk (H: but when trying to Open the drive it says:
"Location Not Available H: is not accessible The device is not ready."
I was going to reinstalling windows on my computer and i thought put 200gb for windows 8 and and 1300gb can be for windows 7(for gaming), So i install windows 8 and shrink the hard drive size so windows 8 has 200gb. And use windows 7 for gaming but my pc is a bit s#*t and a dont do gaming any more. (only on the ps3).
So can i unshrink or something so i have 1.5tb together for windows 8?
I am running 8.1... recently my second seagate barracuda HDD has just been disapearing from explorer... this is my last resort, after this there is nothing... google is completely useless.. I have bought a brand new sata cable, so thats ruled out, the drive is NOT dead, it works perfectly fine and is 100% healthy. the motherboard is not fried, that was just replaced not more than a month ago. the UEFI BIOS is up to date... basically as i said my drive just disapears.. some days ill be able to see it and access files, the next it will not show up in any program at all... I have tried seatools, it does NOT show up in there... im just about ready to throw this damn drive out the window...
I'm currently using a Dell Inspiron 3520 laptop with Windows 8 on it. I have an external hard drive from a Windows 7 desktop. It recognizes the external hdd right away and I can access it but I can't figure out how to boot Windows 7 as the primary. I've tried changing boot order in bios but I've had no luck as it still boots Windows 8 first. Is there a way to use the Windows 7 as the primary drive ? Even a way to temporarly turn off the Windows 8 hard drive will work. I just need to access the Windows 7 hard drive without having to navigate through program files to have to open something.
I have a Dell XPS-12 laptop. It's pretty standard, and I only use it for school. I'm a Computer Science major (which is incredibly ironic in this situation... wow), and I partitioned part of my harddrive off, about 32 GB, for a CentOS and then Kali Linux install, first to run a configuration and write some custom code for an open source captive portal my work has deployed and second for testing my place of employments security implementation (boy was it easy to gather some scary data with a simple wireshark capture..). I am extremely busy with being a fulltime student and also working 2 jobs and freelancing web development, and I haven't been able to figure out why after reformatting the partition I was using for the Linux installs, I could never reintegrate that partition into my own Windows partition. It's incredibly annoying as I only have a 128 GB SSD and after screwing with it for ten minutes, said screw it and just made it into a backup drive where I keep all my code and larger ISO images for different OS' I have (after just a year of studying CS, I've had to use a total of 6 different Linux OS', as well as messing with trying to get an ArchLinux install up and running correctly... I'm starting to feel like a collector)
why my harddrive is being super lame and finish that matrix for the Software Packaging class' final it's pretty obvious which I'm going to go with. Problem is, now, I'm starting to do a bit of freelance security consulting here and there, and I need to have a portable Kali partition with me. I also need to shrink the partition, but when I do I can never put it back into my main Windows partition so there really is no point.
Also, I'm running windows 8.0 right now, but I've had 8.1 before and the fixes still didn't work.