Issue with drive letter E:

[Legengaf]

Here is my situation:
For over 2 years I have used an external hard drive with Windows 10, always using drive letter E: with it. My issue started after updating to the Windows 10 Spring 2018 creator's update.

Since the update, everything on my system works perfectly from boot, until I plug the external in. After I plug it in, the Disk Management utility will hang on "Connecting to Virtual Disk Service," DiskPart command will not execute, I get no response when attempting to safely eject the drive, my system will hang on the Restart or Shut Down screen if I attempt to do either of those, and finally if I simply unplug the external drive, it will still be shown in the "This PC" window, but will show no data if I click on it.

Trying to update the device driver results in a hang as does the Hardware Devices troubleshooter.

On the other hand, I am currently using a different external drive on drive letter F:, and I have no issues.
Any idea what's going on here?

 

[TJ Hooker]

Hmm, maybe try uninstalling the device driver. Without the drive connected, open up device manager, View > Show hidden devices. Locate the drive under "disk drives", right click and uninstall device. The next time you connect the drive the driver will automatically install again, hopefully it will work better then.

 

[seagate_surfer]

Hello Legengaf, what brand is your external drive? If you have a Seagate, use Seatools and run a scan. It will give you the health of the drive. This to discard the drive been the culprit of the problem.

 

[Legengaf]

Hmm, maybe try uninstalling the device driver. Without the drive connected, open up device manager, View > Show hidden devices. Locate the drive under "disk drives", right click and uninstall device. The next time you connect the drive the driver will automatically install again, hopefully it will work better then.

Thanks for the idea, but nothing changed. Just automatically reinstalled the driver and left with the same issue..

 

[Legengaf]

Hello Legengaf, what brand is your external drive? If you have a Seagate, use Seatools and run a scan. It will give you the health of the drive. This to discard the drive been the culprit of the problem.

Thanks for the reply. I am using a WD Blue 2.5 750GB HDD, in an Inateck external enclosure. I have tried another external enclosure as well, with no luck.

 

[rgd1101]

On the last update, windows 10 start showing the system partition, go to disk management and remove the drive letter

 

[USAFRet]

Is the E drive letter visible when this external drive is not connected?
This appears to be an after effect of the April 1803 Win 10 update.

Remove that drive letter E, here: https://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/153261-fix-windows-10-1803-update-new-full-drive-creation

 

[Legengaf]

On the last update, windows 10 start showing the system partition, go to disk management and remove the drive letter

Is the E drive letter visible when this external drive is not connected?
This appears to be an after effect of the April 1803 Win 10 update.

Remove that drive letter E, here: https://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/153261-fix-wind...

This is what my Disk Management shows.

BUT, through some testing i found out I can connect and disconnect USB Flash drives using drive letter E: with no issue. Yet, when I try to use my external, I still receive all the same errors...

 

[rgd1101]

Can you change the drive letter on the external in disk management?