Hard Drives

[strollin]

Do you have a SD card reader built-in to your computer or currently attached via USB? Card readers will assign drive letters to the various card slots on them.

However, you can tell them apart as they will be listed as removable drives.

 

[pete.i]

It could be a card reader or even four different card readers that are using up the letters but they should show up in Disk Management. The drives could be hidden but I have never known 5 drives be hidden and I think Bluenose has done a clean install so providing all the available drives were deleted at the point of initial install ( which is what I would do with a clean install) then there shouldn't be any hidden drives. It is a bit of mystery at the moment.

 

[bluenose1940]

Do you have a SD card reader built-in to your computer or currently attached via USB? Card readers will assign drive letters to the various card slots on them.

However, you can tell them apart as they will be listed as removable drives.

I'm back, sorry for the delay in providing a response. No I don't have any card readers attached to my pc.

The comment by pete.i. was interesting where he said "providing all the available drives were deleted at the point of initial install ( which is what I would do with a clean install) then there shouldn't be any hidden drives" Not exactly being a whizz with computers, I don't know what he means by this as when I did the clean install I don't recall anything popping up about the hard drives.
Over the weekend I'm going to try allocating drive letters that are available and will then try to change them again afterwards, as suggested by BikerEcho.

pete.i. also suggested that these drives might be hidden Is there some way of checking this?

Thanks again for all the help.

 

[pete.i]

I'm back, sorry for the delay in providing a response. No I don't have any card readers attached to my pc.

The comment by pete.i. was interesting where he said "providing all the available drives were deleted at the point of initial install ( which is what I would do with a clean install) then there shouldn't be any hidden drives" Not exactly being a whizz with computers, I don't know what he means by this as when I did the clean install I don't recall anything popping up about the hard drives.
Over the weekend I'm going to try allocating drive letters that are available and will then try to change them again afterwards, as suggested by BikerEcho.

pete.i. also suggested that these drives might be hidden Is there some way of checking this?

Thanks again for all the help.

When you start the install one of the early questions is where you would like to install Windows. I delete all the partitions so that I am installing on only one partition on drive 0. If I am doing a clean install I don't want anything on my hard drive including all the recovery junk and such like that the manufacturers put on so I delete everything down one partition. Sometimes the recovery partition can take up half a hard drive. I would also unplug any external drives. I find doing it this way reduces the confusion with other drives and partitions during the installation.

As far as seeing whether you have hidden partitions they should show up in drive manager labeled as hidden partitions. Sometimes these partitions cannot be deleted without using software from the hard drive manufacturer, I use Seatools for instance from Seagate but it does work with other drives. I have only ever had drives that have had one hidden partition never a drive with four hidden partitions so I would be surprised if that is your problem. At the moment it is a bit of a mystery.

 

[BikerEcho]

Good call pete. If that's the case partition wizard can properly reallocate or merge them.
https://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html

 

[bluenose1940]

I think that i might owe you chaps an apology. The first thing that I did this morning was to have a good look at my computer and I discovered something that I was not aware of, until now that is!
In the past I have had to purchase a couple of card readers, the most recent being one for the mini cards that are used in my dashcam. What I found on my pc this morning was 4 slots situated above the DVD slot, I thought (up until now) that these were air vents for cooling purposes. On closer inspection, there is an image/icon at the side of each slot of depicting memory memory cards and so these ARE obviously card readers.

I purchased my pc second hand and it didn't come with a manual or anything and so I was not aware of these. I offer my most sincere apologies and am now wondering if this discovery will help to throw some light on my problem.

Thanks again to each of you for your patience and help.


I have taken a snip of my drive listing, hopefully it will appear here. I don't know if you will be able to see all of it as the image does seem rather large.
I am going to do the clean install again and would be most grateful if I could be guided on making the 'C' SSD drive into one partition and mentiond by i.pete.

 

[pete.i]

I am going to do the clean install again and would be most grateful if I could be guided on making the 'C' SSD drive into one partition and mentiond by i.pete.

I think this is where it might become complicated. the easiest way would be to disconnect your sd card readers and all other disks so that you are only left with the "C" drive. That is the way I would do it but that does mean that you will have to go inside your computer case to disconnect the card readers and you do have to be comfortable working inside your computer case to do this.

I haven't actually read the western Digital guide that BK 123 has pointed to but I'm sure that will point you in the right direction. Where changing drive becomes comlicated is when you want to change a drive letter to another one that is already in use. You will have to rename the drive that has the letter you want to use to something else, I usually go way down the alphabet, and then change the drive letter of the drive to that letter. As I said this is where it gets complicated and by far the easiest way rto do it IMO is to disconnect all drives and after your clean install on the master/boot disk then reconnect the drives one by one in the order that you want to the drive letters to appear. Sorry I cannot explain it any easier than that. I know how I would do it whether you can understand my method I do not know maybe someone else can explain it more clearly.

I also notice that your disk management table lists your "C" drive as disk 1. I would have expected to see Disk 0 there. I don't suppose it makes any difference in this case and as I have never worked with SSDs ( I wasn't aware that your boot disk was an SSD) it could be that that is the way an SSD is numbered in disk management.

 

[bluenose1940]

I have downloaded EaseUS partition Manager to see if I can get things tidied up a bit.
(Hopefully) I have attached a couple of images of my 'C' drive as seen by EaseUS and am wondering if it is actuall possible to get this SSD drive to be just a single partition. I don't want any of the 'additional' partitions and would like to get rid of them.

I have been into the 'Merge' section of EaseUS but can't seem to get that to work. Should I be trying to format the three partitions that I don't want, prior to merging them?

 

[strollin]

In your screenshot, you can see that the disks labeled E:, F:, G: and H: are listed as "Removable" which is what I had said in my earlier post above. Those are definitely from a Card reader.

As already stated, you can disconnect the card reader to regain those drive letters back.

 

[bluenose1940]

In your screenshot, you can see that the disks labeled E:, F:, G: and H: are listed as "Removable" which is what I had said in my earlier post above. Those are definitely from a Card reader.

As already stated, you can disconnect the card reader to regain those drive letters back.

Yes thank you for that strollin, I will disconnect them as I never use them anyway. Although I suppose that if I disconnect them and the do a drive letter reallocation, I could then reconnect them and they will then use other letters that are available..
my main aim now is to try to get the 'C' drive back to being just one partition as per my last post.

Thanks again for your input.