Puzzling Drive Label Issue

smilejack1 · Sep 17, 2024

Here's the problem: One of my drives is listed in MiniTool as *

:\, whereas in Windows Disk Management, it is listed as D:\ - no parentheses - and it is not visible in File Explorer at all.

Here's the background, and I hope it's not excessive: Late last year, I installed Windows 11, and against my better judgment, I did a full upgrade from Windows 10, as opposed to formatting my system drive and starting anew. What I got was a fairly buggy installation which grew buggier over time.

Then I tried a reset - again, against my better judgment - and what I got was an even buggier installation, such that I bit the bullet and did a clean install about 5 days ago.

I first became aware of the drive label issue when I installed Backblaze after the reset and it alerted me to the drive label issue not long after I installed it.

I don't know how much harm the drive label issue can cause, but it scares me and I'd like to get it cleaned up. I have a backup of the data, so should I reformat the drive and start over, or is there an easier way? All help is appreciated.

antspants · Sep 17, 2024

Hi, welcome

Where the smiley face is, can you either code it or put a space between driveletter[space]: please

antspants · Sep 17, 2024

I’ve personally never once created a partition on my OS drive to use as a secondary drive. I don’t know what issues it could cause.

Disk Manager recognises it correctly so I am not sure if I’d see that as a problem.
I’ve never seen MiniTools contradict Disk Manager at all.

I’d be interested in seeing what the more experienced members say about it.

smilejack1 · Sep 17, 2024

D'oh! It's drive D, and i'm no font of Windows wisdom, but it troubles me that it doesn't have parentheses around it like all the other drives do.

antspants · Sep 17, 2024

Did you partition the C: drive to add the D drive?

Close Minitools and change the drive letter in Disk management to M: or something, reopen MiniTools and see whats different?
The asterix is generally used when no drive letter is assigned, yet there is one. why there is a colon after the asterisk and before the drive letter in MiniTools, I have never seen.

The asterix in front of a drive (no colon after it) means the drive is GPT formatted (99,99999999% certain)

edited

antspants · Sep 17, 2024

If you didn’t purposely create that D Drive, the C Drive most likely wasn’t partitioned properly on reinstall. Diskpart and clean would be my method of reinstalling.

When the first window appears:

Shift key + F10
Type; diskpart
Type; list disk
Type; select disk x (x being the drive position/number. Be careful that you are cleaning the right drive/disk)
Type; clean
Type; exit

Totally wipes all partitions on the C Drive, then install.

garlin · Sep 17, 2024

antspants said:
diskpart
list disk
select disk x (x being the drive position/number. Be careful that you are cleaning the right drive/disk)
clean
exit

select disk X
clean
convert gpt (if you want an UEFI-style layout)
exit

smilejack1 · Sep 17, 2024

I tried what you suggested in Minitools, and it appeared to complete the task, but when it finished, the drive label remained unchanged.

antspants said:
If you didn’t purposely create that D Drive, the C Drive most likely wasn’t partitioned properly on reinstall. Diskpart and clean would be my method of reinstalling.

When the first window appears:

View attachment 109017

Shift key + F10
Type; diskpart
Type; list disk
Type; select disk x (x being the drive position/number. Be careful that you are cleaning the right drive/disk)
Type; clean
Type; exit

Totally wipes all partitions on the C Drive, then install.

Well, other than this puzzling issue, this installation is quite stable. I'm going to bide my time and see if anybody else weighs in, and if nobody has any other advice, I think I will reformat the drive with the wacky label and see what that does for me.

antspants · Sep 17, 2024

smilejack1 said:
I tried what you suggested in Minitools, and it appeared to complete the task, but when it finished, the drive label remained unchanged.

Well, other than this puzzling issue, this installation is quite stable. I'm going to bide my time and see if anybody else weighs in, and if nobody has any other advice, I think I will reformat the drive with the wacky label and see what that does for me.

But did you purposely create the D Drive?

Bree · Sep 17, 2024

smilejack1 said:
D'oh! It's drive D, and i'm no font of Windows wisdom, but it troubles me that it doesn't have parentheses around it like all the other drives do.

Welcome to Eleven Forum.

It's quite simple really (if a little confusing). The :D:\ you see in Minitools is not actually the drive letter, somehow you managed to set the drive label to ":D:\". It doesn't actually have a drive letter assigned to it, which is why it doesn't appear in Explorer.

Here I've renamed one of my partitions and removed its drive letter to reproduce your situation. Just use Disk Management to change its label and assign it a drive letter and you'll be OK.

antspants · Sep 17, 2024

garlin said:
convert gpt (if you want an UEFI-style layout)

I was fairly certain that Windows 11 did that upon install?

But thanks, I’ll add that to my notes

antspants · Sep 17, 2024

Bree said:
Welcome to Eleven Forum.

It's quite simple really (if a little confusing). The :D:\ you see in Minitools is not actually the drive letter, somehow you managed to set the drive label to ":D:\". It doesn't actually have a drive letter assigned to it, which is why it doesn't appear in Explorer.

Here I've renamed one of my partitions and removed its drive letter to reproduce your situation. Just use Disk Management change its label and assign it a drive letter and you'll be OK.

View attachment 109020

I agree, but the drive in question is 56GB, I’ve never seen a system partition that size outside of C:
I still think it was the install method? No?

Bree · Sep 17, 2024

antspants said:
I agree, but the drive in question is 56GB, I’ve never seen a system partition that size outside of C:
I still think it was the install method? No?

Well, assign it a drive letter in Disk Management and Explorer should be able to see what's in it :wink:

garlin · Sep 17, 2024

antspants said:
I was fairly certain that Windows 11 did that upon install?

But thanks, I’ll add that to my notes

Setup will read the target drive's partition type, it's not allowed to make any assumptions.

1. If you read any diskpart script, there's always an explicit "convert gpt" at the end of UEFI examples.
2. When you're in Setup, there is no option to pick between a MBR vs GPT layout. If you delete all the existing partitions and click "New", Setup will auto-create an appropriate layout (MBR or GPT) based on the disk's partition type.

Berton · Sep 17, 2024

I got my first computer in '92, retired in '94 and week later offered job in a computer store then started building and repairing computers. I've always put in a Label, something to identify a drive such as name, size, etc. There's several characters that can't be used and won't allow them, goes back to DOS days and still valid in Windows Command Prompt. All drives need to have at least 1 partition created before they can be formatted. Installation of Windows on a bare drive usually handles that chore, may create 3 to 5 and 1 will be the largest for boot/system drive C:. Storage drives need only 1 partition but 2 or more can be created for desires in things like sorting by subject, etc. Back in MS-DOS 5 the partition size limit was 512MB but drives were coming at 540MB so 2 partitions were needed if wanting to use the full size. Things began changing with DOS 6 and drives getting bigger. Answering a young client's question I demonstrated the answer by formatting a 1TB with 9 x 100GB partitions and the last at 512GB.

hsehestedt · Sep 18, 2024

antspants said:
I agree, but the drive in question is 56GB, I’ve never seen a system partition that size outside of C:

I often do that on purpose. Say I have a laptop with a single drive of 1TB. I'll create Windows on a 256GB partition, and I'll make another partition that has all remaining space for other data. This allows me to keep certain data separate from the OS drive, especially helpful for backups.