Ext USB drive has drive letter but does not appear in Explorer

gregrocker said:

You have a Dynamic disk which is meant to span a single partition over multiple hard drives. Is there? If not then you'll need to Convert a Dynamic Disk to a Basic Disk

@greg
OP is having a problem with drive letter assignment to a USB drive. Would Dynamic Disk on his hard drive be an issue/apply to drive letter assignments to a USB drive? I wouldn't guess so. Just curious your thoughts

@rebadurchee
Sure sounds like a drive letter conflict problem (which is one of the things that DriveCleanup tool helps fix). Though not sure why it keeps coming back since "N" seems far enough away from your other drive letters to avoid conflict (is why m256997683119 suggested "Z")

This might help shed more information. Run the DriveLetterView tool. When everything is working, click Ctl-A to select all items in the display, Ctl-S to save. Before you actually save the file use the Save As pull down menu to save the file as Tab Delimited Text. Upload the txt file. Next time problem occurs, create and upload another report so i can compare.

Drive letters are assigned to disk volumes and mapped network drives. Windows remembers drive letter assignment to a device when its removed. (Letter isn't released until the device driver is uninstalled, not device simply removed) - or you manually change the letter. So letter conflicts can occur when different USB disk/flash are un-plugged / re-plugged

So maybe <fingers crossed> the tool might help reveal something

I thought the drive letter assignment was resolved awhile back so was only warning him about the possibly misconfigured Dynamic disk which can cause other problems.

I also noted to always use Disk Mgmt for the functions it can do safest, then for something it cannot do what has worked best here in tens of thousands of complicated partitioning operations we've helped with is Partition Wizard boot disk, which has never failed while all others can and will fail except Disk Mgmt.

@gregrocker

Thank you for the reply to my curiousity :) as well as the tip! I'll add Partition Wizard to my tool kit