No drive letter allowed (using Windows 11 Home, version 22H2)

jagjr129 · 30 Jun 2023

I am trying to access a 1TB hard drive, but disk management will not allow it. I have tried to assign it a drive letter, but again no go. Disk management screenshot attached.
Not sure if you can make out the disk management screen, but the problem is with disk 4. It shows up with 931.08 GB free space first, than 449 MB healthy (recovery partition). Nothing that I have done allows me to assign a drive letter or access the drive.

No drive letter allowed (using Windows 11 Home, version 22H2)-harddrive1.jpg

No drive letter allowed (using Windows 11 Home, version 22H2)-harddrive2.jpg

Samuria · 30 Jun 2023

Welcome to the forum disk 4 is 990 meg not gigs it's a recovery partition so why do you want to access it?

dalchina · 30 Jun 2023

Hi, welcome to tenforums- which supports Win 10.

So, once again, please note that Win 11 support is provided by sister site
elevenforum.com

Thanks.

As for viewing the content of the Recovery partition, an easy way is with a free partition manager such as Minitool Partition Wizard, where you can rt click and explore the content. No need for disk changes. E.g.

No drive letter allowed (using Windows 11 Home, version 22H2)-1.jpg

Are you experiencing some problem with your Advanced Startup options?

dalchina · 30 Jun 2023

- which means e.g. SHIFT click Restart to Safe Mode will not work, nor automatic repair, and Advanced Startup options e.g. boot to CMD prompt etc will not be available.

Of course, if you're deperately short of disk space, I suppose 500Mb might make all the difference...

Try3 · 30 Jun 2023

The OP is asking about Disk 4 not some partition 4.

jagjr,

I have never seen Disk mgmt graphical section label anything as "Free space".

- How did it get like this? What's the history of this disk?
- If you right-click on it, do you get the option to Delete volume... or possibly New simple volume?
- Does your computer boot correctly if this disk is disconnected?

I suspect that this disk once held an OS. Were it not for that worrying "Free space" label, I would delete that "Free space" volume & its neighbouring Recovery partition then create a new volume spanning the entire disk that I would then format as NTFS and use for data storage.

Denis

Garyw · 30 Jun 2023

Try3 said:

The OP is asking about Disk 4 not some partition 4.

jagjr,

I have never seen Disk mgmt graphical section label anything as "Free space".

- How did it get like this? What's the history of this disk?
- If you right-click on it, do you get the option to Delete volume...? or possibly New simple volume?
- Does you computer boot correctly if this disk is disconnected?

I suspect that this disk once held an OS. Were it not for that worrying "Free space" label, I would delete that "Free space" volume & its neighbouring Recovery partition then create a new volume spanning the entire disk that I would then format as NTFS and use for data storage.

Denis

I think this happens when deleting an extended partition on an MBR disk format. This post (last post on page) may be of help.
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...d-eca53d53f36b

jagjr129 · 30 Jun 2023

At one time it did house the main operating system on another computer. I tore that one down and wanted to salvage a perfectly good drive to put into a new unit thus having three (3) hard drives in that unit. After formatting the drive, this is what has come about.

Try3 · 30 Jun 2023

I suggest you
- right-click on its 'Recovery' partition & delete that volume,
- right-click on the 'Free space' partition & create a New simple volume,

No drive letter allowed (using Windows 11 Home, version 22H2)-new-simple-volume-context-menu.jpg

- right-click on the New simple volume and 'extend' it to bring in the unused space that was the 'Recovery' partition,
- format the whole volume NTFS.

@SIW2 You know about this stuff. I don't think I've left anything out.

Denis

Megahertz · 30 Jun 2023

I see that Disk 1 (not shown) is a UEFI - GPT drive that has the OS. It also has 3 Recovery partitions.
Partition 4 - 980M (this is probably the active Win 11 recovery partition)
Partition 5 - 16G (by the size, it seems to be a Factory recover partition from an old OS)
Partition 6 - 1.58G

On drive 4 you also have a Recovery partition (why?)

To find out witch is the active recovery partition, open a CMD window as administrator and type:
Reagentc /info

Paste the results here.

Once we find witch is the active recovery partition we can delete the others and reinitialize drive 4.

To initialize drive 4, open a CMD window as administrator and type:
diskpart
list disk (it will list all drives. Identify the drive number - Should be 4)
select disk n (replace n by the USB drive number obtained with list disk - Should be 4)
clean
convert GPT
create part primary
select part 1
format fs=NTFS quick
assign
exit (to exit diskpart)

SIW2 · 30 Jun 2023

Likely an extended partition, but in that case diskmgmt rt click context menu should offer the option to create volumes and format. It will only offer to assign a letter to a formatted partition.

Have a look with diskgenius (free version is fine) and post a screenshot.

Free Download DiskGenius Online