I assigned a drive letter to a flash drive with Disk Management to use for backup. I later wanted to use the drive on another computer, so I went to disk management and asked it to remove the assigned drive letter from the drive, which it did. This gave me back the drive letter to be used again in Windows which is what I intended. The problem is that now this flash drive is not recognized by Windows file explorer on this computer at all. It does appear in Disk Management as a drive with no letter assigned to it. How do I get Windows to automatically assign it a drive letter again? The drive behaves normally (gets assigned a drive letter) on a different computer so the problem isn't with drive itself. Thanks!
SOLVED How do I unassign a drive letter and still have the drive recognized in file explorer?
- Thread starter Four-Eyes
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Doing what you did, makes no sense. Why use Disk management? When you remove the flash drive, Windows releases the drive letter to be used again. If you want more control over this, use USB Drive Letter Management (USBDLM).
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html
If I assign a drive letter to the flash drive yes it works but I must now assign a drive letter for it to work at all on this Windows machine. It works as it originally did on other Windows machines where Windows assigns it a letter. On answer #2, you are correct that if I unplug the drive the letter is then available for use in Disk Management, so I was making the problem more complex than it is. I see now that this always allows me to be able to do a work around. I didn't know about USB Drive Letter Management (USBDLM) and thanks! Thanks for the replies!
Can I return the USB drive to its original way of function where when I plug it in it appears in Windows file explorer automatically assigned to the next available drive letter?
Can I return the USB drive to its original way of function where when I plug it in it appears in Windows file explorer automatically assigned to the next available drive letter?
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I experimented and did the exact same thing as you did, with the same results as you experienced.
Then I went back into disk management and assigned it a drive letter, which ever one came up at the top, I believe F.
Then I ejected it.
Plugged in another usb thumb drive and it took F and while that one was still plugged in, I also plugged in the experimental drive and it took E just like it would have, had I not done your experiment.
This experiment shows I can always work around the problem to get things arranged the way I want so I'll call this resolved. Thanks for the replies and help!