I using XP SP3

I have five external drives. Why are my drive letters fashioned as
if two of the drives are some kind of sub drive of some other?

Here is what I see in file explorer. (I'm leaving out the C: and D:
drives, which show normal.)

E:
G:
G: (F:)
F: (H:)
I:

It's as if my F: external drive somehow is a sub drive or G:, and my
H: external drive is a sub drive of F:

What the hey is going on? I ran into this once before.

How is this happening? How do I fix it?

On 13/05/2023 00:49, Sam@lol.org wrote:
> I using XP SP3
>
> I have five external drives. Why are my drive letters fashioned as
> if two of the drives are some kind of sub drive of some other?
>
> Here is what I see in file explorer. (I'm leaving out the C: and D:
> drives, which show normal.)
>
> E:
> G:
> G: (F:)
> F: (H:)
> I:
>
> It's as if my F: external drive somehow is a sub drive or G:, and my
> H: external drive is a sub drive of F:
>
> What the hey is going on? I ran into this once before.
>
> How is this happening? How do I fix it?

It seems like your external drives are not recognized correctly. This
can happen due to various reasons such as drive mapping issues, drive
letter conflicts, or issues with the disk management utility. In this
case, it appears that the drive letter assignments are messed up.

To fix this, you can try the following steps:

1. Open Disk Management by pressing Windows key + R, typing
diskmgmt.msc, and pressing Enter.
2. Locate the external drives and check if they appear as separate disks
or partitions.
3. If they appear as partitions, you may need to delete those partitions
and recreate them as separate disks.
4. Right-click on each disk and select "Change Drive Letter and Paths".
5. Assign a drive letter that is not already in use, and make sure the
"Assign the following drive letter" option is selected.
6. Click OK.

After doing this, your external drives should appear as individual
drives with their own drive letters. If the issue still persists, you
may want to check if there are any driver updates available for your
external drives, or contact the manufacturer for support.

--
I hope this helps!
David

On 5/13/2023 3:14 AM, David Brooks wrote:
> On 13/05/2023 00:49, Sam@lol.org wrote:
>> I using XP SP3
>>
>> I have five external drives.  Why are my drive letters fashioned as
>> if two of the drives are some kind of sub drive of some other?
>>
>> Here is what I see in file explorer. (I'm leaving out the C: and D:
>> drives, which show normal.)
>>
>> E:
>> G:
>> G: (F:)
>> F: (H:)
>> I:
>>
>> It's as if my F: external drive somehow is a sub drive or G:, and my
>> H: external drive is a sub drive of F:
>>
>> What the hey is going on? I ran into this once before.
>>
>> How is this happening?  How do I fix it?
>
>
> It seems like your external drives are not recognized correctly. This can happen due to various reasons such as drive mapping issues, drive letter conflicts, or issues with the disk management utility. In this case, it appears that the drive letter assignments are messed up.
>
> To fix this, you can try the following steps:
>
> 1. Open Disk Management by pressing Windows key + R, typing diskmgmt.msc, and pressing Enter.
> 2. Locate the external drives and check if they appear as separate disks or partitions.
> 3. If they appear as partitions, you may need to delete those partitions and recreate them as separate disks.
> 4. Right-click on each disk and select "Change Drive Letter and Paths".
> 5. Assign a drive letter that is not already in use, and make sure the "Assign the following drive letter" option is selected.
> 6. Click OK.
>
> After doing this, your external drives should appear as individual drives with their own drive letters. If the issue still persists, you may want to check if there are any driver updates available for your external drives, or contact the manufacturer for support.
>

I figured it was "SUBST" at work, but the problem with that theory,
was that SUBST takes as an argument, both a drive letter plus a
directory path. This did not suggest you could do a drive
substitution purely at the letter level.

subst /?

Associates a path with a drive letter.

SUBST [drive1: [drive2:]path]
SUBST drive1: /D

drive1: Specifies a virtual drive to which you want to assign a path.
[drive2:]path Specifies a physical drive and path you want to assign to
a virtual drive.
/D Deletes a substituted (virtual) drive.

Type SUBST with no parameters to display a list of current virtual drives.

Yet, in the article here, they're using subst G: /d
to remove a virtual drive.

https://www.howtogeek.com/256866/what-to-do-when-windows-shows-two-different-drive-letters-for-the-same-disk/

So maybe my syntax ideas just needed a slight tweak
so I could SUBST at the letter level. I just tried this,
and it worked. This maps physical D: to virtual G: .
The backslash after the D: represents a "path of zero length".

subst G: D:\ # Link virtual G: to physical D:\ path
...
subst G: /d # Remove virtual G: later

But whether that is the OPs problem, I can't reproduce his
listing style. I don't know what tool prints it out that way.

F: (H:)

Paul

On 17/05/2023 15:09, Paul wrote:
> On 5/13/2023 3:14 AM, David Brooks wrote:
>> On 13/05/2023 00:49, Sam@lol.org wrote:
>>> I using XP SP3
>>>
>>> I have five external drives.  Why are my drive letters fashioned as
>>> if two of the drives are some kind of sub drive of some other?
>>>
>>> Here is what I see in file explorer. (I'm leaving out the C: and D:
>>> drives, which show normal.)
>>>
>>> E:
>>> G:
>>> G: (F:)
>>> F: (H:)
>>> I:
>>>
>>> It's as if my F: external drive somehow is a sub drive or G:, and my
>>> H: external drive is a sub drive of F:
>>>
>>> What the hey is going on? I ran into this once before.
>>>
>>> How is this happening?  How do I fix it?
>>
>>
>> It seems like your external drives are not recognized correctly. This
>> can happen due to various reasons such as drive mapping issues, drive
>> letter conflicts, or issues with the disk management utility. In this
>> case, it appears that the drive letter assignments are messed up.
>>
>> To fix this, you can try the following steps:
>>
>> 1. Open Disk Management by pressing Windows key + R, typing
>> diskmgmt.msc, and pressing Enter.
>> 2. Locate the external drives and check if they appear as separate
>> disks or partitions.
>> 3. If they appear as partitions, you may need to delete those
>> partitions and recreate them as separate disks.
>> 4. Right-click on each disk and select "Change Drive Letter and Paths".
>> 5. Assign a drive letter that is not already in use, and make sure the
>> "Assign the following drive letter" option is selected.
>> 6. Click OK.
>>
>> After doing this, your external drives should appear as individual
>> drives with their own drive letters. If the issue still persists, you
>> may want to check if there are any driver updates available for your
>> external drives, or contact the manufacturer for support.
>>
>
> I figured it was "SUBST" at work, but the problem with that theory,
> was that SUBST takes as an argument, both a drive letter plus a
> directory path. This did not suggest you could do a drive
> substitution purely at the letter level.
>
>    subst /?
>
>    Associates a path with a drive letter.
>
>    SUBST [drive1: [drive2:]path]
>    SUBST drive1: /D
>
>      drive1:        Specifies a virtual drive to which you want to
> assign a path.
>      [drive2:]path  Specifies a physical drive and path you want to
> assign to
>                     a virtual drive.
>      /D             Deletes a substituted (virtual) drive.
>
>    Type SUBST with no parameters to display a list of current virtual
> drives.
>
> Yet, in the article here, they're using subst G: /d
> to remove a virtual drive.
>
> https://www.howtogeek.com/256866/what-to-do-when-windows-shows-two-different-drive-letters-for-the-same-disk/
>
> So maybe my syntax ideas just needed a slight tweak
> so I could SUBST at the letter level. I just tried this,
> and it worked. This maps physical D: to virtual G: .
> The backslash after the D: represents a "path of zero length".
>
>    subst G: D:\     # Link virtual G: to physical D:\ path
>    ...
>    subst G: /d      # Remove virtual G: later
>
> But whether that is the OPs problem, I can't reproduce his
> listing style. I don't know what tool prints it out that way.
>
>    F: (H:)

--

It's good of you to comment, Paul.

I expect the OP has become frustrated and searched for an answer elsewhere.

--
David