Drivers/Hardware :: Explorer Showing Removable Drives Twice
Jan 21, 2016
When I insert any removable drive (USB, SD cards, etc) the device shows up twice in Explorer. Once under "This PC" tree and the other as a device. See attached pic (USB Drive H):
I remember hearing about this being the way it's designed to work, but frankly it's a bit silly - I only need to see a single entry for the drive/device...
Is there any way to get rid of one of these entries without stuffing up some other Explorer feature?
Yesterday I went from Windows 7 to windows 10 with a clean install.
My system based on an ASUS P9x79Pro motherboard has 4 internal disk drives.
The first two, a 500GB SSD for the system and a 2TB spinning disk, are connected to Intel SATA 6G ports and are fine.
I also have two further 2TB data drives attached to the Marvell SATA 6G ports. It is these that are looking unusual.
After installing windows I installed the Marvell driver from the ASUS website for windows 10. However Device manager does not show Marvell under Storage controllers
Both data drives connected to the Marvel controller appear under eject media as removable drives along with something called "Eject Marvell 91xx config"...
One of the data drives (but not the other) appears in File Explorer as a removable drive.
I just completed an update installation on a desktop PC running Windows 7. Now my hard drives show up as removable drives.
Normally this is due to the need to install an AHCI driver. And that is normally the Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver for Intel chipsets. The driver was installed in Windows 7.
Is this a case where I need to manually install a new IRST Driver for Windows 10? If so, should I uninstall the existing first, or will the new one overwrite the old?
When I use the "Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media" icon/tool, to remove a USB stick, my internal SSD drive shows as a choice to be removed. How can I get the SSD off this list?
In Device Manager, under Disk Drives, looking at the SSD drive's properties there is no "Removal Policy (i.e. choice of "Quick Removal" or "Better Performance") like the removable hard drive on my laptop has.
I have several server drives mapped to my Surface Pro 3 tablet, and from time to time they disappear from Windows Explorer and XYplorer (an Explorer replacement). They are still there and mapped, as Net Use shows them mapped properly. But to get them tho show up in either Explorer or XYplorer, I have to physically remap them (right click: Map Network Drive...) and when I do so they already show up with the proper drive connection but won't appear unless I finish the remapping. XYplorer has a tool to reconnect all network drives, but nothing happens there.
My new windows 10 only sees my PC - when searching for my files in Explorer, it cannot 'see' my two external drives when I plug them in. I've looked in Device Manager and they are not showing in there either. How can I tell Win 10 to access my external drives?
I thought Win 10 would automatically spot my external drivers the moment I plugged them in? Then it would go search for and install the appropriate drivers - but it isn't doing that..
Ok, I thought this was just bitlocker stuff but its all removable drives.
When I connect a removable drive I don't get a notification banner. I get a sound and the notification goes straight to Action Center instead of showing the banner. I've gone in and disabled and renabled all the notifications, Ive made sure both "Banner" and "Sounds" are enabled for everything, but still nothing.
When I get an email in Outlook I get the banner like I'm supposed to, others programs like Logitech Gaming Software are also showing banners, so it seems like a device connection thing at the moment.
How to ungroup and separate removable drives in This PC?
it shows removable drives, optical drives and hard drives in one group together. This is one of the the worst changes made to Windows. Sadly, the OS does not offer you any option to the ungroup drives logically so local drives are in one group and the rest in another.
I've done a reinstall of Windows 10 today. I unplugged my internal storage HDD's to isolate the SSD for the install, wiped the SSD, and reinstalled 10.
Now it's installed, I've plugged my 2 internal HDD's back in, started up Windows, and neither drives are showing. Neither in device manager or in Explorer. What could be the issue here, and how do I resolve it?
Ever since I upgraded to Windows 10, I'm now seeing the 4 card reader drives built into my computer appearing on some of the different desktop folders.
They don't appear on C:UsersusernameDesktop, nor do they show up on the physical desktop screen itself, which also doesn't show the Recycle Bin, Control Panel, etc (ie, it works the same way I had set it up before on 8.1) but they do appear on my taskbar desktop, on the navigation pane, and so forth.
After a system refresh of Windows 10 all external disk storage drives, Micro SD and USB are listed twice in file explorer. This is a common problem, reported many times in forums and community support web sites. Could a solution be to reload file explorer. Is this possible and where would I find the download?
My setup before the problem was: - Windows 8.1 in a 250GB SSD with Linux dual boot - Secondary 160GB HDD (fs: ntfs, type: primary) - Secondary 3TB HDD (fs: ntfs, type: gpt)
The 3TB drive was working normally on windows 8.1 when I bought it. After some months I decided to upgrade to Windows 10. After that, I cannot access my drive and Disk Management shows just grey options for the drive.
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After that I did a clean Windows 8.1 install again just to see if it was an OS problem, but now the same is going on with the management system. I used MiniTool Partition Wizard to check what's going on and this is what it shows
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What I tried doing is to force a label on this drive with MiniTool (in this case, D:, but then when I try to access the folders in Explorer it says 'D: is not accessible, access denied'. I already tried giving me all permissions/full control in the security tab in various ways but none worked, it still said 'Access Denied'.
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The only way I could finally access it is by killing explorer.exe and then starting it again with Admin rights, but once I reboot the system, the drive dissappears again and I have to do everything all over (assign label with MiniTool -> kill explorer -> open explorer with admin rights).
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P.S: Before you ask, I am not trying to recover deleted data. The partition exists, and I can access it through MiniTool Partition Wizard (since it recognizes it as a active EFI Healthy Partition on a GPT formatted drive). The problem is trying to access through Windows Explorer to the data.
I'm having trouble with USB devices not showing up in windows explorer. I put in a thumb drive with data on it, but it's not in win explorer. I went to device manager and found the TD under disk drives. Also my external 3T G: disk drive is there. The thing is that my G: drive shows up twice in win explorer, once as a disk drive and the other as an expansion drive. I still can't see the TD. So how can I look at the drive or do anything with it. The light on it is on and the computer see's it, but no way to access it. I have the latest windows updates. I have all usb and hid unchecked for the computer to put them to sleep if not used, but that doesn't work.
I just installed Windows 10 fresh and noticed that two of my Harddisks are not showing at the left menu in the Explorer.I have 3 Harddisks and only Harddisk D: ist showing. When i connect a USB-HDD it shows up instantly.
I just put the 1511 upgrade on (for the third time, but that's another story). I've noticed that when I open File Explorer I have a WHOLE BUNCH of USB ports that have nothing plugged into them... What the upgrade did, but these weren't visible previously. How do I turn them off?
And yes, I've gone into the File explorer options in the control panel and UNCHECKED "Hide empty drives". Didn't appear to make any difference...
I'm running Win10 64bit. My sig has all my system details.
I use 2 SSD's and 1 internal HDD.
Issue 1: My internal 2TB HDD is displayed in Device Manager as Portable Devices. This HDD hosts my User's Folders.
Issue 2: I have an external HDD which is a USB3.0 compatible. When it's connected to a USB3.0 port, the LED on the HDD is blue, and if it's USB2.0 the LED is white.
When I wake up the PC from Sleep mode, the HDD doesn't return to USB3.0 status, instead it's LED is white. Unplugging and re-plugging, won't work. I'll have to reboot the PC to get it back to USB3.0
I have an Epsom A810 printer, connected to desktop PC by USB.
The printer has a USB port for loading pictures to the printer from a thumb drive. Thing is, this port makes the printer show up in Disk Management and My PC as a removable drive.
But it is not a drive at all. I can't access the files on the thumb drive through the printer, so it functions as a phantom drive.
Any method to stop Windows from recognizing the printer as a removable drive?
There is an icon in my tray to "Safely remove hardware and eject media". It is always there (even when no USB devices are plugged in) because Windows thinks my second internal SSD is removable.Is there a config setting or a registry edit to fix that?
My Maxtor external hard drive is not showing under This PC, but is under Device Manager. Updating the driver comes back as driver is up to date. Changing Bios setting between UEFI and Legacy do not make a difference. Using a different USB port does not make a difference.
I can get full access to the drive if I boot up LinuxMint from a USB stick.
Microsoft says this is a manufacturers driver problem. Acer says this is Windows problem.
Ever since I upgraded to Windows 10, I'm now seeing the 4 card reader drives built into my computer appearing on some of the different desktop folders.
They don't appear on C:UsersusernameDesktop, nor do they show up on the physical desktop screen itself, which also doesn't show the Recycle Bin, Control Panel, etc (ie, it works the same way I had set it up before on 8.1) but they do appear on my taskbar desktop, on the navigation pane, and so forth.
