Hello all. I have a strange problem with my win 7 HP 64 bit. I have two hard drives connected to docking stations, one using esata and one USB. When i turn off any docking station or remove the HDs windows does not remove the drive icon in my computer unless I reboot. This means if I connect the Hard drive again windows assigns a different letter for it but original is still there, and does this every time I disconnect and reconnect the HDD each time assigning yet another new letter but leaving the old ones there. I would like windows to do what it used to and clear the drive icon and letter when removed.
Anyone know of what could have happened to cause this.
Also even though I can't be sure this seems to have developed after running Linux Mint from live CD without installing to HD.
But can't believe this would have changed windows behavior as windows was not running during this Linux Trial.

Seems no one on here can help me with this.

Are the drive properties set as removable?

Does it work correctly if you "safely remove" the drive before powering off?

I don't have 7 installed any more so I can't check anything further.

Have you tried uninstalling/reinstalling the drivers?
Are you ejecting the volumes before disconnecting them?

Thanks for you help everyone.

I not possible to use safely eject as both HDs are set as removable and only give pop up saying drives still in use.
I have uninstalled and reinstalled every USB item in the USB stack. No resolution.

Below are other things I have tried and found


1: There is no problems with connecting / disconnecting flashdrives or memory sticks. The letters are released and they retain their drive letters when reconnected. Even if I forget to use safely remove option.

2: have used the trouble shooter, it found errors and said it fixed them but did not resolve the drive letter problem.

3: have tried uninstalling the Items in the USB stack in device manager, but did not resolve the releasing of the drive letters.

4: There is not any problems with drive letters if start in safe mode, or log in to the hidden administrator account.

5: Have disabled all startup programs in msconfig and rebooted but problem still exists the letters are not released.

6: Both HDs have same problem even though one is connected via Esata and the other via USB, so uninstalling the USB stack would have had no effect on the Esata one.

I think here we have our answer.

I'm not sure what it is though

Basically, something on your user account is accessing the drives or otherwise messing with it.

Can you please list all active tasks on your account which are not on the admin account so we can have a better guess?

Problem now resolved thanks to JJW009 who pointed me in the right direction.

By using task manager to end selective processes it was found be caused by Iobit SmartDefrag.

In SmartDefrag options I had ticked "Do not display flash drivers and solid state drivers (recommended)".

By unticking this option the drive letters now clear when disconnected and show correct letter when reconnected.

Will now go to Iobit site to ask why they recommend a setting which causes such problems.

Once again thanks to all who assisted especially JJW009

I'm not sure what they mean by display, but you don't want to be defragging USB drives and SSDs, do you?

I think they mean don't show them so cannot choose them for defrag.

As I do not have SSD drive installed on my desktop it not a problem. As if I had windows on SSD I would not have installed Smart Defrag. As I have not got installed on my laptop which has an SSD, and I also disable windows defrag in services for that machine

So I have lost nothing by unticking the box but gained a lot by drive letters now working properly.

Again thanks for everybodys help.