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How to get rid of ghost drive in Windows?

F

few34fwfs

Joined
Apr 21, 2024
Messages
49 (0.11/day)
So I got a ghost drive of 96MB with the letter E on windows explorer. It is described as "local disk".
There is no partition on disk management with the letter E and that drive simply doesn't exist.
I don't have access to it and Windows tell me to use the security tab that it simply doesn't have.
It appeared half full when I decided to format it, I expected an error but I got none, and now it appears empty. Other than that nothing changed.
I rebooted the Windows but it's still there.
I assume it was created when I connected my PC with my tablet when it was on TWRP recovery tho I did nothing more than connecting it.
How do I get rid of it?
 
Did you ever install any kind of Ram Disk software?
 
Load up disk management tool and see if anything on there has E: assigned to it.
 
few34fwfs said:
"There is no partition on disk management with the letter E"
Click to expand...
Ok load up device manager, and enable hidden devices.

Then expand storage volumes. You can also expand disk drives, and see what you see there.

I have a feeling it might be a virtual drive which hasnt cleaned up properly.
 
chrcoluk said:
Ok load up device manager, and enable hidden devices.

Then expand storage volumes. You can also expand disk drives, and see what you see there.

I have a feeling it might be a virtual drive which hasnt cleaned up properly.
Click to expand...
OK I did that.
To my understanding the grey volumes and drives are inactive so we are not interested on those.
The drives look good. They are the drives I have.
It also appears to have 12 active volumes, but they all appear the same. They don't have any details on them.
 
What happens if you right click the drive, any unmount option for it?
 
chrcoluk said:
What happens if you right click the drive, any unmount option for it?
Click to expand...
Uhm yeah but I didn't believe it was a drive. I thought it was a driver for sure so I rebooted on safe mode but the drive was still there!!!
Tho in safe mode the E drive is accessible to me and I can write on it.
So I started disabling drives from the device manager and lo and behold when I disabled a Samsung NVME the E drive disappeared.
Looking again on disk management that drive has an 100MB partition on it, but that partition has no letter assigned to it!!!
And that partition is the EFI system partition of another Windows installation that I have.
So if the E drive is the EFI from the other installation then I just formatted it....and I have no clue how it came to have a letter assigned...
 
Ok that explains things then, glad you got to the bottom of it.
 
few34fwfs said:
Well it still doesn't explain how it has a letter but at least we know what it is. Cheers for the help.
Click to expand...
It has a letter as Windows will get treat a EFI partition for another installation differently to its own. Didnt know before you revealed the cause you had two installations on different drives.

Likewise if you boot a live Windows rescue system, all EFI partitions get drive letters.
 
chrcoluk said:
It has a letter as Windows will get treat a EFI partition for another installation differently to its own. Didnt know before you revealed the cause you had two installations on different drives.

Likewise if you boot a live Windows rescue system, all EFI partitions get drive letters.
Click to expand...
Even if that's the case why doesn't it show on disk management that it has a letter?
 
few34fwfs said:
Even if that's the case why doesn't it show on disk management that it has a letter?
Click to expand...
Dont know about that, Windows probably confused.
 
few34fwfs said:
Even if that's the case why doesn't it show on disk management that it has a letter?
Click to expand...

That was likely just a bug. You can actually assign and un-assign the letters at will. Windows by default doesnt during install because it references it by partition GUID but I have had it assign a letter after build updates etc. You likely would have seen it if you used diskpart. Or simply cleared the glitch by trying to assign, then un-assign in disk manager.

Otherwise I wouldn't recommend in the future you randomly format partitions you dont understand that windows makes. If this was an old windows install on a second drive that you aren't using for anything other than storage, you are likely fine.

If you had some kind of dual boot, you might have just destroyed it. Though in rare cases (not super likely) it was just the recovery partition.
 
96 MB seems like EFI partition? Something like that. try assigning or removing it through diskpart

1722123448503.png
 
few34fwfs said:
Yup diskpart did the job. I went to the par and then remove letter=E. Done. Thanks!
Click to expand...
If you ever decide to reinstall windows later in time, make sure all other storage drives are disconnected
 
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