Remove False Drive

[Powell41]

Good Evening Folks:

I recently plugged in my USB backup drive to update my saved files. It showed up as drive "Q" but I was denied access. I unplugged it and reinstalled. This time it showed up as drive "F" which is its usual designation and it worked fine. I proceeded to copy my data and unplugged it again. Drive "F" vanished but drive "Q" remained and I cannot get rid of it. I went to Disk Management to see if I could delete it from there but "Q" is not even listed. Drive "F" is there showing a "no media" entry as it should. I even poured through the disks for my Comp TIA A+ course to see if there was anything that would help, but no such luck.
This is not the end of the world of course, but I don't like little ghost items showing up on my computer. As the Beatles sang: "He likes to keep a clean machine"
Any suggestions from you Windows 7 gurus out there? They would be much appreciated.

Regards
Powell Lucas

P.S. I logged off and rebooted as this sometimes gets rid of these "ghosts in the machine", but it didn't help.

 

[DeaconFrost]

Some external drives load virtual CD drive software and create extra drives. Is this possible from your external drive? I had a Western Digital running Smartware that did it before I killed off Smartware. You can also right-click on the drive, and under properties see what hardware it is using. Do you have any card-readers, or printers with built-in card readers?