VmWare Virtual Machine has 2 hard drives, 3 File Explorer entries

Have been making virtual machines with a single (virtual) hard drive. Experimented with adding a 2nd virtual drive. Worked like it should, can copy files.

The problem is, the 2nd drive is repeated.
I now have C: (once), D: (once) the virtual CD Rom that has VMware tools, and E: that is the added 2nd drive is there twice.

Whatever I put in the topmost E: drive is repeated in the other. How and why is this happening? Is there a way to keep it from happening? If now, is there a way to fix?
Thanks

Could you open Disk Management within the VM and grab a screenshot of what it is that you are seeing?

Here is what Disk Management of the virtual shows. It is in File Explorer that the added 2nd virtual drive is repeated

And here is what shows in File Explorer

Your drive E: is configured as removeable.
The Windows File explorer shows all removeables twice

@syntoh is correct. Here is my usb drive. It's always been shown twice in left pane of explorer.

VM Workstation selected the drives, so I let it. When creating VM with more than one hard drive how would I select so the drives aren't removable? VMWare chose both as nvme.

As this is default behavior, it has never bothered me. You might see if this will help you. I have not tried so this is not a recommendation. Just passing on information. I would certainly backup the registry key first. USB Drive Appearing Twice In Navigation Pane Of Windows 10/11 File Explorer

glasskuter said:

As this is default behavior, it has never bothered me. You might see if this will help you. I have not tried so this is not a recommendation. Just passing on information. I would certainly backup the registry key first. USB Drive Appearing Twice In Navigation Pane Of Windows 10/11 File Explorer

Click to expand...

I have edited the (physical) Windows registry before when an external drive appeared twice. Just searching now for VmWare VM, and there is a fix by editing a couple files in the virtual machine. One of the links referred to the physical install, then said something about not being the same. Wish I would have kept that, now to find it again.

glasskuter said:

As this is default behavior, it has never bothered me. You might see if this will help you. I have not tried so this is not a recommendation. Just passing on information. I would certainly backup the registry key first. USB Drive Appearing Twice In Navigation Pane Of Windows 10/11 File Explorer

Click to expand...

Just tried the link you gave and it and it worked! Thank you so much. I took the advice of one of the comments and renamed the key inside the brackets with an .OLD extension. Didn't realize at first that I had to use a rename, but after I found that it was named with .OLD (rather than deleting. Very glad I didn't have to use the editing vmware files from the links I had found. Didn't get that at all.

Thank you so much again, very easy to do and it works.

Kim Parker said:

Just tried the link you gave and it and it worked! Thank you so much. I took the advice of one of the comments and renamed the key inside the brackets with an .OLD extension. Didn't realize at first that I had to use a rename, but after I found that it was named with .OLD (rather than deleting. Very glad I didn't have to use the editing vmware files from the links I had found. Didn't get that at all.

Thank you so much again, very easy to do and it works.

Click to expand...

Not sure how easy it is with VMWare but I'd configure a VM with a small virtual disk (for "Virtual boot" and the OS while assigning a physical partition or better a physical disk as a 2nd disk. The advantage of that is then you use the real native disk OS I/O rather than virtual I/O which can lead to bottlenecks. Virtual Disk I/O is often a performance problem on VM's which is why commercial servers etc try and "pass thru" real hardware to the VM to achieve almost native performance.

With a Linux VM it's even easier as all you need to do is have a tiny grub / boot "Virtual partition" and the rest on a physical disk. The Grub / boot partition only needs to be around 100 MB !!!!.

This does actually work using a Windows host running VMWare (although these days unless running XP as a VM I'd choose HYPER-V as a matter of course as it is a solid performer these days (and of course Free if you have W11 Pro and above).

Cheers
jimbo

Found a registry hack.
This must be happening a lot. Believe it or not I found a registry hack from answers.microsoft. com that automagically fixes duolicates in Explorer. Not only that, it can restore to the original if wanted. It is a little more than halfway down the page of this link.

"Redirecting"

Hi Clifford,
Please try the REG file method (remove-duplicate-drives.zip)
Note that you need to log off and log back into your account for the change to take effect.

jimbo45 said:

Not sure how easy it is with VMWare but I'd configure a VM with a small virtual disk (for "Virtual boot" and the OS while assigning a physical partition or better a physical disk as a 2nd disk. The advantage of that is then you use the real native disk OS I/O rather than virtual I/O which can lead to bottlenecks. Virtual Disk I/O is often a performance problem on VM's which is why commercial servers etc try and "pass thru" real hardware to the VM to achieve almost native performance.

With a Linux VM it's even easier as all you need to do is have a tiny grub / boot "Virtual partition" and the rest on a physical disk. The Grub / boot partition only needs to be around 100 MB !!!!.

This does actually work using a Windows host running VMWare (although these days unless running XP as a VM I'd choose HYPER-V as a matter of course as it is a solid performer these days (and of course Free if you have W11 Pro and above).

Cheers
jimbo

Click to expand...

I have found that when creating a VMware Workstation virtual, it works for me to start with the default 60 gigs for the operating system, then when Windows is installed I add a 2nd virtual 100 gig hard drive (not pre-allocated) for my files and testing downloads to see if I like before install on something more permanent. I have been installing Windows on that great little Sandisk SSD keyhole portable, then I put my virtuals on that. I use my physical basically to boot up to the Sandisk, and as a holder for my virtuals.

In the past before I found VM my physical would get wear and tear in the registry, and I would try and patch it together without much success and there we were limping along. The SSD/ virtuals are so great, if anything causes trouble I just delete the vm. Like that Voodoo Anti-Virus that I didn't continue with and now every single time I boot up I have to go thru multiple clicks to get rid of the "buy a license now!"

My last 2 virtuals I made, one didn't have the multiple explorer listing and one did. Tried to edit the registry first, to delete the key, didn't work. Then tried the registry hack (as I posted above) and it worked perfectly. So I think I'm all set :)