cannot change hard drive letter using WIn7 Disk management

glasshalffull · Dec 3, 2013

I have a new computer and I connected my old External Hard drive (previously drive "E" on my old computer) to the usb port.

It shows up as drive "I".

I need to change the drive letter back to drive "E" so that my cloud storage backup will recognize the drive.

I went into Computer Management/Disk Management and tried to change the drive letter but when i got to the drop down box to select a letter to change the drive to...letter C thru J are not shown so I cannot select E.

How can I make E the drive letter?

this is a new computer and nothing else is connected to any of the other usb ports. I have not assigned anything with E previously on this computer.

my computer Summary is below:

Operating System
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1
CPU
Intel Core i7 4770 @ 3.40GHz 34 °C
Haswell 22nm Technology
RAM
16.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 798MHz (11-11-11-28)
Motherboard
Dell Inc. 0KWVT8 (CPU 1) 28 °C
Graphics
HP w2207 (1680x1050@59Hz)
1024MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 635 (NVIDIA) 33 °C
Storage
931GB ATA ST1000DM003-1CH1 SCSI Disk Device (SATA) 31 °C
2794GB Western Digital WD My Book 1140 USB Device (USB (SATA)) 35 °C
Optical Drives
TSSTcorp DVD+-RW SH-216DB SCSI CdRom Device
Audio
NVIDIA High Definition Audio
Operating System
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1
Computer type: Desktop
Installation Date: 12/2/2013 4:42:21 PM

laviniuc · Dec 3, 2013

check what's currently using the e letter. that's why it wont let you select it. you need to set the current e to something else first.

Snipergod87 · Dec 3, 2013

E is in use by something else, you will need to change E to another letter than I to E

glasshalffull · Dec 3, 2013

i went into "COmputer Management" and located E:/

not sure what is connected to it..

here are the properties of E:

Device Type: Portable Devices
Manufacturer: Generic-
Location: on UMBus Enumerator

laviniuc · Dec 3, 2013

flash drive? maybe... or maybe the dvd drive? check what it looks like on the computer page. in any case it's safe to change it i guess. just give it whatever, set the current I to E then this back to I. should be easy and if anything goes wrong you just revert.

glasshalffull · Dec 3, 2013

how can i change drive E to something else?

there's no way to change it from Device manager

glasshalffull · Dec 3, 2013

looking at the driver file details it says the driver files for this are Microsoft driver files apart of system32

laviniuc · Dec 3, 2013

I went into Computer Management/Disk Management and tried to change the drive letter but when i got to the drop down box to select a letter to change the drive to...letter C thru J are not shown so I cannot select E.

i thought you knew already. right click the whole dvd drive that has E as letter and change drive letter

glasshalffull · Dec 3, 2013

from device manager page , right clicking does not give me any option to change the name.

only options avbailable are: update driver , disable, uninstall, scan for hardware changes, properties

laviniuc · Dec 3, 2013

so dont go in the device manger

go to disk management in computer management.

glasshalffull · Dec 3, 2013

there is no E drive in disk management.

Only C, recovery, and I (the name of the external that i want to change to E)

Snipergod87 · Dec 4, 2013

Open a command prompt (as administrator) and type in "diskpart" and press enter. Then type in "list volume" You should see something similar to this:

Code:

DISKPART> list volume

  Volume ###  Ltr  Label        Fs     Type        Size     Status     Info
  ----------  ---  -----------  -----  ----------  -------  ---------  --------
  Volume 0     D   Backup & Da  NTFS   Simple       931 GB  Healthy
  Volume 1     E                       DVD-ROM         0 B  No Media
  Volume 2     C                NTFS   Partition     74 GB  Healthy    System
  Volume 3     F   My Passport  NTFS   Partition    931 GB  Healthy
  Volume 4     G                NTFS   Removable   7441 MB  Healthy

Do you see anything listed as E
If you want you can copy and paste it and put it between [.code] [./code] tags (remove the period)

scarymary64 · Jan 31, 2014

Do you have any ISO or Virtual Drive type software installed. I'm not sure if it relates to your issue but I had PowerISO installed and it had reserved E: for mounting of ISO files as virtual drives.

If it happens to be PowerISO then the instructions to change the drive letter it uses are here: http://www.poweriso.com/tutorials/change-virtual-drive-letter-assignment.htm
Change DISK 0 to something specific other than E: or <AUTO> and then E: should become available. You can put it back to <AUTO> if you like after you have assigned the E: drive to a partition or device and it will then just pick up the next available letter.

Such virtual drive letter assignments won't show up using DISKPART or in Computer Management.

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cannot change hard drive letter using WIn7 Disk management

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