DriveLetterView is a new Nirsoft application that displays drive letters from all devices including local hard drives, remote network drives, USB drives, flash storage and optical drives such as CD, DVD or Blu-Ray drives. Even better, it displays the drive assignments if the drive is not connected (but has previously been) to the Windows PC.

The portable application displays all assigned drive letters and drive information on launch. This includes the drive type and name, description, whether it is connected and the instance ID of the drive.

Devices that are currently not connected are shown with a red question mark next to the drive’s icon and a connection status of No.

DriveLetterview offers controls to change drive letters. This is done with a right-click and the selection of change drive letter, the keyboard shortcut F9 or the selection of Options > change drive letter from the menu.

The portable software needs to be started with administrative privileges to change drive letters on Windows 7, Vista and the 2008 Server versions. Drive letters assigned to USB devices that are not connected can be removed from the system.

The software offers the usual Nirsoft features. This includes an export to HTML, text, csv or xml feature and the ability to generate HTML reports. Several command line parameters are available to run the program automatically. The available commands and additional information are provided on the program’s homepage.

DriveLetterview is compatible with all 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating systems from Windows 2000 to Windows 7 including the server variants that have been released in that time.

The portable application is available for download at the Nirsoft website.

It is a confusing error message, considering that the device is a hard drive, and not a drive where a disk can be inserted. There are however a few things that users can do to troubleshoot the issue.

Drive Letter Conflict

A drive letter conflict occurs if the disk that is affected by the error is mapped to a reserved drive letter. That’s probably the easiest to resolve, as it can be resolved by changing the drive letter of the affected drive.

• Type computer management in the start search box and hit Enter. You can alternatively click on the Start Menu orb, then Control Panel > System and Security > Administrative Tools > Computer Management. Please note that the path is valid for Windows 7, and may differ for other operating systems.
• Click Disk Management.
• Right-click the partition, logical drive, or volume that you want to change, and then click Change Drive Letter and Paths.
• Click the removable drive, click Change, click the drive letter that you want to use, and then click OK. Make sure you map a drive letter that is not in use, preferably x,y,z. If that works you can still change it to another drive letter easily.

You may also want to try plugging it into another free port if available.

Software

Transcend JetFlash Online Recovery is a free software program to fix the insert a disk into drive error in Windows. Please note that this drive has been designed for Trascend removable drives. It appears to be working with other drives as well, but there is no guarantee for that. Before you use the software, try finding a comparable software from your device manufacturer. Many happen to have recovery software for this problem available. You may also want to consider contacting the manufacturer’s support first.

Visit the site and download the RecoverISP tool. Please note that you need to supply an email address before you can download the software. The program is compatible with all Microsoft operating systems from Windows 2000 to Windows 7.

Once downloaded plug the removable drive in the computer and start RecoverISP. It is a portable tool that requires no installation. The software scans the removable drive and displays that the ISP is ok or broken.

Press the OK button. If broken was shown a new window appears. A pulldown menu is available in that window. Make sure the right device is selected before starting the repair with a click on the Start Fix button.

Press ok on the next screen to confirm the procedure. The program displays a report in the end detailing whether the fix was successful or not.

Unplug your drive, and plug it in again to see if the fix has resolved the issue. If it did, the error please insert a disk into drive should not appear anymore when accessing the drive in Windows Explorer. The software has been designed to preserve the data on the removable drive. Still, it may be a good idea to backup the data before you proceed with the repairs.

Super Stick Recovery Tool

This tool is not available anymore on a company website. I have downloaded it from Megaupload and checked it at Virustotal. No antivirus engine used at the site reported a hit. I have uploaded the program to Ghacks for a more reliable hosting option. Download Super Stick Recovery Tool 1.0.2.19 from this location and unpack it once it has been downloaded. Please note that this tool will erase all data on the drive, use it as a last resort or if no or only unimportant data is on the drive.

Run the tool as administrator while the removable drive is plugged in. It may take a few minutes before the process completes.

Formatting, Partitioning

Formatting the drive may or may not work depending on the type of error. Some users may get the error “There is no disk in drive. Insert a disk, and then try again.” when trying to format the drive. That’s usually the case if you look at the drive properties and notice that it reports a capacity of 0 Megabytes (in Device Manager > Disk Drives > Right-click, properties > Volumes.

Use GreyGrue has another solution:

Open Command Prompt with admin rights.
*Type cmd in Start menu search box and hit Ctrl+ Shift+ Enter.
Or
*Go to Start menu > All programs > Accessories, right click on Command Prompt and select Run as administrator.
As I was on an Admin account already I just hit Start key + R. Then type in cmd.

First type DISKPART and hit enter. You will see a text block saying version number. Takes a second depending on number of drives.

Next type LIST DISK command and note down the Disk number of your USB flash drive. it will be listed as disk 0, disk 1, and so on. My thumb drive was Disk 4 with my other four drives before it. You can also see the total size as well as free space for each drive. Here my Thumb drive was ** bytes, 0 Bytes free. While the windows manager displayed a 0 bytes, 0 free.

Replace the drive number “#” with the correct drive number for the following commands.

SELECT DISK #

CLEAN

CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY

SELECT PARTITION 1

ACTIVE

(here you put the file type you wish to format in to. NTFS, FAT32, FAT16. FAT32 is standard.)

FORMAT FS=NTFS

(Format process will take a few seconds)

ASSIGN

EXIT

Verdict

The Please Insert A Disk Into Drive error can have numerous causes and symptoms. That makes the troubleshooting and fixing problematic. As a rule of thumb: If no data is on the drive, or only unimportant data, then use the the formatting / erasing / partitioning option. If important data is on the drive, contact the drive manufacturer first, they sometimes have tools that they send out on request only.

Have you encountered this error message before? How did you fix the issue on your PC?

Windows actually comes with the tools to create a virtual drive from any folder on one of the hard drives connected to the computer. We have explained that in detail in assign drive letters to folders, which explains how to do that with the subst command.

Still, some users may prefer to use a graphical user interface for this operation, and that is what Virtual Driver provides.

virtual driver

The program adds a new context menu entry to the folder right-click menu, allowing users to create a virtual drive out of the selected folder. The directory selected will remain in its position which means it stays accessible as before, but will furthermore become available as a drive letter.

The interface offers settings to select the drive letter, drive label and icon. There is furthermore an option to make the change temporary, which means just for the current session, or permanent.

Permanent folders can be unmapped at any time by right-clicking again, which will display the unmap virtual drive option.

Experienced computer users may prefer to use the command line tool subst instead, as it does not require additional software to be installed. Windows 64-bit users need to rely on subst, as Virtual Driver is only compatible with 32-bit editions of Windows.

The software program is available for download at the developer’s website. A similar program is Visual Subst which we have reviewed earlier as well.

The USB Drive Letter Manager runs as a Windows service that solves the problem of drive letter assignments between usb devices, subst folders and network shares by automatically checking if the drive letter has been assigned to the latter before assigning a drive letter to a new USB device.

The software program can reserve letters so that they are not used by local drives, assign letters only from a list of default drive letters and specifically assign drive letters to USB devices by placing an ini file in the device’s root directory.

Another interesting feature of USB Drive Letter Manager is the ability to remove drive letters of card reader slots as long as no card is inserted. If you ever connected a multi-slot card reader to Windows you might have noticed that each slots receives its own drive letter by default which can be a lot depending on the number of different card slots on the reader.

By default USB Drive Letter Manager is only making sure that no network shares or subst folder letters get assigned to a newly connected USB device. Everything else is handled by the USBDLM.INI file. Additional parameters are described on the homepage of the software.