The World According to Mitch

Okay, I know the grammar in my title is terrible, but I know so many people (including myself) who have had a number of frustrating issues that arose from Microsoft’s April patch cycle.  I will not go into all of them, but one in particular has been annoying me of late.

Okay… but this is my corporate laptop, and I don’t remember having a D Drive.  I know my C Drive is running low, but that is only as a percentage… My actual free space is still over 13GB free.  But… where did that 489MB D Drive come from?

Most computers running any modern version of Windows is likely going to have a hidden partition… or two.  One of them, the ESP Partition, is used by computers adhering to the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI).  It should be around 500MB in size, and before you ask, do not think about deleting this partition… unless you are partial to non-bootable system devices.

The Recovery Partition is usually a 450MB partition that has some information that Windows would need if you decide to clean up… I leave it there because what’s the harm, right?  Until April that is…

If this partition was there in March (and September, for that matter), and nothing has written to it since, why are these Low Disk Space warnings coming up all of a sudden… and every five minutes, just to make matters more annoying?  The answer is simple… and so is the solution.  For some reason there was a  drive letter assigned to the volume all of a sudden… and yes, it has to do with one of the April patches from Microsoft.

Solution:

1) Open the Disk Partition Tool (diskpart.exe).  If your current user is not a member of the local administrators security group, you will have to provide administrative credentials.

2) Type list volume.

Here we see a list of partitions (volumes) on the computer.  Volume 0 is obviously my active partition… it is 237GB, the Label is OS, and the Info says Boot.

Volume 1 is my Recovery Partition… 490MB, with no Label, no Info, and the Drive Letter is D… but there is absolutely no reason for this volume to have a drive letter.  Let’s get rid of it.

3) Select the volume in question by typing Select Volume # (where # is the number of the affected volume)

4) Type Remove Letter=”X” (where X is the Drive Letter in question)

5) Type List Volume

The affected volume should no longer have a Drive Letter assigned… and your problem should be resolved.

6) Exit DiskPart immediately.  (Type EXIT)

**IMPORTANT NOTE: I have two things to say here:

1. If you are not an IT Professional, you should really consult a professional before doing this yourself.  DiskPart.exe is possibly the most dangerous tool that Microsoft provides you with Windows, and should be used very carefully.
2. If you are planning on doing this on your corporate machine, STOP RIGHT THERE!  There is a very good chance that even if you know what you are doing, and even if you have the administrator credentials needed to perform these actions, that doing so without consulting your IT Help Desk will result in a policy violation, and can be grounds for serious disciplinary actions.

If this is your personal computer, and if you are comfortable using DiskPart, this should solve your problem.  If you are concerned, you should let a professional do it for you.  However, if you are comfortable doing it yourself, this should have solved your problem.  Thanks for reading!