Comments on: Change or Delete System Drive Letter via Registry to Remove Conflict USB or FireWire Drive Letter

By: Dolemite

Dolemite — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 15:49:32 +0000

Dash Metro – your point was my exact issue. Using Hitachi drive from Lenovo laptop I encountered this issue. As soon as I disabled the hard disk password from the laptop, then put the disk back in the enclosure, problem was gone immediately.

Moral: Make sure hard disk password is disabled

Thanks!

By: Dash Metro

Dash Metro — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 13:40:56 +0000

I upgraded my Dell notebook’s internal Fujitsu 60GB HD by cloning it to a new Western Digital 160GB HD temporarily installed in an external USB enclosure using WD’s Data Lifeguard Tools. When I then installed the new WD drive in my notebook, it worked fine. When the old Fujitsu drive was installed in the external hard drive case it showed up as a USB device but the partitions did not appear and were not assigned drive letters recognized on either my laptop or desktop PC’s. That’s when I Googled and found this site, but it did not solve my problem. THEN a light bulb went off and I realized I had password – encrypted the old hard drive within the Dell BIOS setup as a security measure, which indeed prevented the old HD from being accessed. I reinstalled the old drive in my notebook, disabled the password, put it back in the external case, and VIOLA!, the drive letters got assigned and data was all there, allowing me to now use my old drive as a backup external device. I thought this info might help add to this thread…

By: Rich

Rich — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 02:54:19 +0000

Interestingly, it also appears that all drives that can be somehow removed (Floppy, CD, USB, Firewire[, Zip]) begin with 5c 00 in there hex data. All of my fixed hard drives begin with 88, but I am not sure if this is just my configuration.

Also, it is also possible to conflict with network drives. At my workplace, no more than one flash drive could be plugged in and used, without unmounting network drives by logging off Novell, to remove Drive F’s mount point, then plugging in the drive (Logging back on to Novell would not create a network drive F when the flash drive was in)

Anyway, great article. This got things cleaned up after having many flash drives in my computer at the same time.

By: Diego

Diego — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 20:15:27 +0000

Sorry, it didn’t work for me. My external USB hard disk works fine in most PCs, I use it to backup my office laptop, but no way to see it in my home PC.
Detected, healthy, no drive letter, invisible in Computer/Disk Management, I deleted all registries but the fix devices (floppy, internal HDs and DVD drive): no news. Please help! Thanks.

By: dude67

dude67 — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 06:12:08 +0000

Thanks! This registry edit guide was really helpful. I had some half-a-dozen letters taken up for the removable USB flash drives. By cleaning all the extra letters from the registry, I managed to get my USB flash drive operating once again.

By: jimheh

jimheh — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 07:00:15 +0000

How about when the drive letter shows in the Disk Management list but does not show on My Computer or Windows Explorer

By: layman

layman — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 11:28:45 +0000

moggoly you are the man your method is so simple. However i believe that there is the need for the alternative method too as admin pointed out.

By: admin

admin — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 03:22:34 +0000

moggoly, your method is indeed very good. However, in most situation, the detected but no drive letter USB device won’t show up in Disk Management.

By: moggoly

moggoly — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 19:19:21 +0000

This article is trying to fix the issue in an over-complicated fashion and shouldn’t be followed… What’s wrong with simply carrying out the following steps:

Open the start menu and right-click on Computer. Select the ‘Manage’ option. This will bring up the Computer Management Console window.

Under Storage click on Disk Management. You should be able to find your USB / Firewire device listed but without a drive letter. Click on it.

Right-click on the item and select ‘Assign Drive Letter’. Select a free drive letter and okay OK.

Bingo – you have fixed the issue. This can also be used to change the drive letter assigned to a removable storage device.

By: No Drive Letter for USB or Firewire Drive » My Digital Life

No Drive Letter for USB or Firewire Drive » My Digital Life — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 07:54:30 +0000

[...] also possible to change drive letter to a free one via registry. Get help or contribute tips or tricks at My Digital Life [...]