It’s a somewhat rare problem, but on occasion, Windows might display the same hard disk or partition twice using different drive letters. Thankfully, there’s usually a simple solution.
This is almost always the result of either a user or program having created a virtual drive that maps to your real drive. These virtual drives are not like drives created with virtual software, but something more like a shortcut or symbolic link that just points one location to another. The virtual drive doesn’t show up in the Disk Management tool (because it isn’t a real drive), but you can remove it using the Command Prompt. Here’s how.
RELATED: The Complete Guide to Creating Symbolic Links (aka Symlinks) on Windows
First, open up the Command Prompt by right-clicking the Start menu (or pressing Windows+X) and clicking Command Prompt.
At the prompt, type the following command:
Where
In the case of our example, Disk Management confirms that C: is our real drive, meaning that G: is our virtual drive. So, our command for removing it would look like this:
Once you issue the command, the virtual drive should disappear immediately. No need to restart Windows or anything. And that’s all you have to do. It’s a problem that doesn’t crop up much, but when it does, it can be frustrating. And now you know how to fix it.