Description of External Drive Changes when Disconnected

My question is why does the description of an external drive that is pinned to Quick access lose the description when it's disconnected?

I have 2 external drives (D & E) which I alternate for backups. Both are pinned to Quick access. Up until about 3 days ago, when I disconnected one, it would still read, e.g. Passport1 (D:) with a question mark over the drive. I understand the question mark is because the drive is not attached.

What confuses me is that the description no longer says "Passport1" when the drive is disconnected, although that description does come back when I reattach the drive. It does keep the correct drive letter.

I've attached the images of what I now see when 1 drive is attached & 1 isn't & what shows in the Properties dialog box.


Thank you in advance.

Hello @phrab,

phrab said:

My question is why does the description of an external drive that is pinned to Quick access lose the description when it's disconnected?

I have 2 external drives (D & E) which I alternate for backups. Both are pinned to Quick access. Up until about 3 days ago, when I disconnected one, it would still read, e.g. Passport1 (D:) with a question mark over the drive. I understand the question mark is because the drive is not attached.

What confuses me is that the description no longer says "Passport1" when the drive is disconnected, although that description does come back when I reattach the drive. It does keep the correct drive letter.

You can try setting the actual Drive Letter of the External HDD . . .

> How to Change and Assign Drive Letter in Windows 10

I hope this helps.

@phrab

Phil, I can reproduce your problem exactly with my Seagate External 1TB, on a 3.0 USB port. Attached and Ejected:



You say this started about 3 days ago. I did the 19042.906 Preview Cumulative, which is the only major thing that has happened recently. Prior was 19042.899. Did you do the same Preview CU? If you did, and have not cleaned the LCU out, you can try to uninstall the CU, or restore a backup image from prior to the CU.

I can't easily go back to test, all of mine are updated and I have cleaned up.

Paul Black said:

Hello @phrab,

You can try setting the actual Drive Letter of the External HDD . . .

> How to Change and Assign Drive Letter in Windows 10

I hope this helps.

Thank you for your reply. I had already assigned a drive letter to each external drive. I don't lose the drive letter...only the description when I disconnect the drive.

f14tomcat said:

@phrab

Phil, I can reproduce your problem exactly with my Seagate External 1TB, on a 3.0 USB port. Attached and Ejected:



You say this started about 3 days ago. I did the 19042.906 Preview Cumulative, which is the only major thing that has happened recently. Prior was 19042.899. Did you do the same Preview CU? If you did, and have not cleaned the LCU out, you can try to uninstall the CU, or restore a backup image from prior to the CU.

I can't easily go back to test, all of mine are updated and I have cleaned up.

Thank you for your reply.
I try not to update my Windows versions until I'm sure they don't have any major drawbacks. I still have version 2004 (build 19041.804). I suppose that this isn't a major problem, since it hasn't affected any functionality. I'm just trying to understand why this happened. At least I have company on this "issue".