[SOLVED] How to "open" up drive letters?

EyyMunchian

Honorable
Dec 28, 2016
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10,940
Hello so I've been noticing this and it hasn't really bothered me up till now.

When I plug in a new usb or drive it assigns a new letter path to the device correct?
I remove the usb never ever using it again...how to I remove that stored path on my PC? Regedit?
For example a friend of mine gve me a flash drive with our project and I will 100% never use that drive again. The Drive letter was (Y:.)
How can I delete the (Y:.) so it can be "reused" for a different drive maybe later on?
 

Aeacus

Titan
Ambassador
As far as i'm aware, Win uses the same drive letters for same devices.

Example;
I have 2x USB flash drives: Kingston DataTraveler 2.0 (8GB, USB 2.0) and Kingston HyperX Savage (128GB, USB 3.1).

If i plug my DataTraveler to my PC, Win assigns it letter M: . When i unplug it and put my HyperX Savage into the PC, the same drive letter M: is assigned to my 2nd USB flash drive as well.

Same is with my microSD cards. I have several of them and my Win always gives them the same drive letter which for my case is I: .

So, there are nothing to worry about.
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator

TJ Hooker

Titan
Ambassador
You can uninstall non connected devices by going to device manager, View > show hidden devices, then uninstalling greyed out devices under Storage Volumes. I think this would clear any drive letter associated with the drive. Unfortunately you can't tell which device corresponds with which particular drive.