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Question

Devices with Removable Storage

Nov 13, 2012 10:14PM PST

When I turn on my pc and it boots up I click on my computer it displays a list of items that are on my computer but under the heading .....Devices with Removable Storage I have my cdrom drive and 4 removable disks lettered E, F, G, H. But I have no removable storage connected to my PC, how can I repair this problem. This pc is new to me bought it second hand it has windows XP home. On my old pc it only recognised removable storage if it was plugged in. How can I fix this problem. Also have purchased 120gb hard drive that I want to use as a slave with the original hard drive and it won't let me format it

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Re: drives
Nov 13, 2012 10:29PM PST

Removable storage might be a card reader for 4 different kind of cards. Not a problem anyway, so there is no need to repair it. However, https://www.google.com/search?q=xp+hide+drive+letter will tell you how to hide them, if you want.

About that second hard drive:
1. What does Disk Management say about it?
2. Does it have a drive letter?
3. If the driver letter is, say, k:, what happens if (in the command prompt) you say format k: (+ enter)?

Kees

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drive letter
Nov 14, 2012 8:40AM PST

Kees
I think you got me all wrong I don't want to hide the drive letter i want to get rid off it permanent. I would have liked a clean hard drive with just the operating system and the basics that go with it.

As for the other hard drive it has been assigned the letter I (i) following on from the other 4 drives i cant read or open. When I opened Device Manager all four drives were listed along with the 2 hard drives installed on this computer

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E, F, G, H
Nov 14, 2012 8:53AM PST

If a desktop, open the case and disconnect power and cable from the card reader device. Physically removing the device will accomplish the same thing, but leave you with an empty hole in the front of the computer.

Maybe drive I (i) is not good. Drive letter for that drive will change once you disconnect the power for the card reader; shut the computer down first, unplug the power connection to the card reader, then start it back up. Unplug and reseat the connections for the slave drive before powering back up. Check to make sure your slave drive is either set to cable select or slave when installing it.

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Card Reader
Nov 15, 2012 9:45PM PST

mchainmchain

Thanks for your reply, now I know that the drive letters refer to a piece of hardware which is already installed on this pc, I'm fine with it. Just wanted to know why they were there.

The problem with the other hard drives still persists. It recognises the hard drive and how big it is but won't let me open it or read it and tells me its not formatted, when I try to format it windows tells me it cant format it.

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Re: formatted
Nov 15, 2012 9:54PM PST

Then go into Disk Management (part of Windows) delete the partition(s) on it and create a nice new one (or more than one if you think that makes sense), formatted NTFS.

Kees