GetUSB.info Logo

Solved: Windows Will Not Assign Drive Letter To USB Flash Drive

Problem Issue:

This is happening on Win8 and Windows 10.
When I remove a USB drive and reconnect it, Windows will not assign a drive letter. Clearly this is a problem as every other computer I use assigns a drive letter.

There are three solutions. All of which will work.

      1) You can go into Disk Management and select the device and assing a drive letter. This is a manual process and not ideal for each time you plug in a flash drive.
      2) Good chance the driver or registry entry for that device is rogue or corrupt. Use this USBScrub tool to remove the registry entry. Chances are this will fix the problem. USBScrub link
      3) Use ‘diskpart’ and enable the automount feature.
  • Open Command Prompt as Administrator (search for Command Prompt in the Start Menu, right click, Run as Administrator)
  • Type ‘diskpart’ and hit Enter.
  • Once in the ‘diskpart’ command prompt type ‘automount enable’ and hit Enter.
  • Type ‘exit’ and click Enter

For solution number one from above, Disk Management is really the GUI version for diskpart, but a GUI (Graphical User Interface) which has scaled down functions from what all the things diskpart can really do.

Diskpart has 37 commands that you can do very cool things with. The 38th command is help, so I’m not counting that.

automount

Enables or disables the automount feature. When enabled (the default), Windows automatically mounts the file system for a new basic or dynamic volume when it is added to the system, and then assigns a drive letter to the volume.

Here is the Microsoft webpage for diskpart and all it’s functions. Some of the most popular functions include Clean (clear all partitions), Online (take an off line device, like a USB hard drive, and get it back online) and Active (On basic disks, marks the partition with focus as active).

Tags: , ,

Rich Gates

Administator for GetUSB.info GetUSB.info started in 2004 with the concept of providing USB information for everything USB related. At the time, USB was gaining momentum and every day new products, articles and news became published. Today, the site is focused on bringing technical information, tricks and hacks to USB related products. The site does publish off topic information as well, to keep the variety up. Please visit the footer area of any page if you or your company is interested in article or product placement via purchased advertising.

Copyright © 2006 +

USB Powered Gadgets and more...

All Rights Reserved

GetUSB Advertising

This is a high value website providing great exposure to your product and brand. Visit our advertising page to learn specifics.

For more information
Visit our advertising page.

Nexcopy Provides

USB copy protection with digital rights management for data loaded on USB flash drives.

Contact us learn more