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If you have not changed the default settings in Default Programs, any drive connected via eSATA, USB will automatically mount. Simple Basic 101 stuff.
If you remove partition letters, that should stick. If it doesn't, then you have another problem.
Partitions will always be available, because the MBR controls them. Regardless of what letter you assign to them.
There is no way to deactivate a Partition, unless you make it "Extended" with GParted, which you can use Tuxboot to create a Live version on a USB stick.
Problem is, as you can see in the pic I provided, Disk Management doesn't show those partitions as having letters assigned to them, and when I remove letters via diskpart, it doesn't stick over reboots.
The partitions I wanna remove are mostly recovery/EFI partitions, which usually aren't mounted anyway.
Try making up a GParted stick. You only need a 4GB USB stick to run. Then you should be able to boot up on it and remove the extra recovery partitions.
For some reason when 8.1 came out, instead of using the existing l, it created a whole new one.
When I upgraded from home to pro on 8, it created a new recovery, along with the Toshiba recovery. Then 8.1 added another, which made up four recovery partitions.
When I did 10 on my test box. I redid it as a new install, so that it was a Fresh image, instead of rolling all of the crud over from a image that I had, when I had to do a incremental from Vista to 8.1, just to install 10.
You can do that with Diskpart in the Admin Command window. How to Use the Diskpart Utility to Assign and Remove Drive Letters Another is Drive Letter View. Majorgeeks.com has the best clean repository of files that is around. No malware in them. Download DriveLetterView - MajorGeeks How to use Drive Letter View. Change Delete Windows Drive Letters with DriveLetterView