Windows 11 Keeps Assigning Drive Letter to Recovery Partition 

Quick Tips

• The recovery partition should be unlisted from your lettered drives as it contains vital system recovery info (WinRE).
• This problem is caused by malfunctioning drive attributes from an update, a drive clone, or it could be another reason.
• To remove the letter, you’ll need to use the Command Prompt and DiskPart command line tools.

You might be used to Windows swapping the names of your external hard drives and USBs, but what happens when your recovery partition, which should only be used in emergencies, suddenly appears as a writable drive with its very own drive letter?

This article will be your guide to restoring your recovery partition to its intended role.

The Invisible Friend

If you’re suddenly dealing with a recovery partition that seems to be doing something other than its assigned role, you might be wondering what’s happening. The recovery partition is created automatically by Windows and is a way for the operating system to restore itself to a previous working state (or factory settings) in case of emergency. This partition houses the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE).

It’s a very useful partition to have. As you can see from the above image, it appears at the end of your main drive, behind the EFI partition and the main partition. On a normal drive, your main partition should be the only one with a drive letter assigned.

But what happens when it isn’t?

What to Do When Windows 11 Keeps Assigning a Drive Letter to the Recovery Partition

If your recovery partition suddenly has a drive letter and is showing up in File Explorer, this is most likely a problem of missing hidden attributes. The drive is no longer hidden or unmounted. It might also be that an update or disk clone has altered the metadata of your hard drive. Data on this drive is crucial and shouldn’t be overwritten or deleted. Let’s look at some fixes to this problem.

Remove the Letter via Command Prompt

Command Prompt is a tool with many different uses. Today, we’ll be using it to remove the letter from your recovery partition. Here’s how:

Step 1. Open the Run dialog (Win + R) and type “cmd.” Press (Ctrl + Shift + Enter) to run as Administrator.

Step 2. The WinRE’s status and location can be checked by typing “reagentc /info” and pressing “Enter.” If the partition location (“Windows RE Location:”) shows a letter instead of a number, you’ll need to fix things.

Step 3. Type “diskpart” to open the DiskPart tool in the Command Prompt.

Step 4. Type “list volume” to see the current list of drives on your machine.

Step 5. If you see your recovery partition listed with a drive letter, type “select volume [number]”.

Step 6. Type “remove letter [letter] to get rid of the partition letter.

If the recovery partition doesn’t show up at the volume level, you’ll need to go deeper and access the partition level:

Step 1. In DiskPart, type “list disk” and press “Enter.”

Step 2. Type “select disk [number]” to choose the disk with the partition.

Step 3. View all partitions by typing “list partition”

Step 4. Look for the partition labeled “recovery” under “Type” and type “remove letter [letter]” if there’s a drive letter.

Hide the Drive

If you keep seeing the recovery partition popping up, then you should hide it to prevent files from being overwritten. Here’s how to hide it using Command Prompt:

Step 1. Type “diskpart” into the Command Prompt to begin the tool.

Step 2. Select the partition (see above) and then type “set id=de94bba4-06d1-4d40-a16a-bfd50179d6ac override” to remind the partition of its proper identity.

Step 3. Type “gpt attributes=0x8000000000000001” to set the recovery partition to hidden and read-only.

Step 4. Your partition should now be unlisted from File Explorer.

Unmount the Drive

You can also hide the drive by unmounting it in the Command Prompt. Here’s how:

Step 1. Open the Command Prompt, type “mountvol [driveletter]: /d” and press “Enter.”

Step 2. Check that the drive is no longer showing in File Explorer.