"Phantom Drive Letter" in Windows Explorer

[Guest]

I have two removable drives (a 250 G hard disc & a CF Card Reader).

Usually I click the "safely remove" icon before I remove them, but sometimes
it doesn't work and/or I forget.

Now, I have three "phantom drive letters" in my windows explorer window, and
if I plug in my Card Reader it is designated by three drive letters
displaying in the Explorer Window.

How can I remove these three "phantom drive letters", and how can I get it
so that the Card Reader only opens one representative drive letter?

Thank you for your help.

 

[Michael Walraven]

May I recommend that you change the options on the removable devices so that
you do not need to 'safely remove' before turning off or removing them. This
will result is a small hit to speed of use but for most operations it will
be insignificant.

In device manager, right click on the removable device, select properties
then policy tab. Optimize for quick removal. If you have noticeable slowdown
in your normal operations with this setting you can of course reverse it.

If your card reader shows three drive letters that is probably because there
are three slots into which cards can be inserted. My card reader has four
slots and normally shows four drive letters. I didn't like that as I only
use one of the slots for my camera XD cards. To stop showing the unused
slots/drives:

In device manager right click on the removable device for the unused slot,
click on disable (NOT uninstall). That should prevent that slot being
reported as an available disk letter.

Michael