An empty drive is a drive with no media. For example, a connected media card reader without a SD card inserted.
File Explorer will hide empty drives by default.
If you turn on Show all folders for the navigation pane in File Explorer, empty drives will always show in the navigation pane even if you turned on Hide empty drives.
If you turn on Show hidden files, folders, and drives in Folder Options, empty drives will always show as faded (dimmed) in File Explorer > This PC even if you turned on Hide empty drives.
This tutorial will show you how to turn on or off Hide empty drives for your account in Windows 10 and Windows 11.
The drive space indicator bar gives you a visual display of available free space for each drive shown on This PC in File Explorer.
The drive space indicator bar is blue until free space gets below 10%, then the bar turns red to help let you know the drive is low on free space.
If wanted, you can remove the drive space indicator bar to no longer show on drive tiles.
This tutorial will show you how to add or remove the drive space indicator bar for all users in Windows 10 and Windows 11.
Windows will automatically mount new basic volumes that are added to the system, and assign them drive letters by default.
A drive letter is a single alphabetic character A through Z that has been assigned by Windows to a physical drive or drive partition connected to the computer to reference the drive by.
You can remove the drive letter assigned to a drive, partition, or volume if wanted to unassign the drive letter from the drive, partition, or volume.
If you remove the drive letter from a drive, partition, or volume, the drive, partition, or volume will no longer show as a drive in File Explorer > This PC.
Unassigned driver letters will be available to assign to a drive, partition, or volume.
This tutorial will show you how to remove a drive letter in Windows 10 and Windows 11.
Windows will automatically mount new basic volumes that are added to the system, and assign them drive letters by default.
If wanted, you can disable Windows from automatically mounting any new basic volumes that are added to the system.
This tutorial will show you how to enable or disable the automatic mounting and assigning of a drive letter when a new drive is connected for all users in Windows 10 and Windows 11.
The Turn off hard disk after setting in Power Options lets you specify the period of inactivity before the disk is automatically powered down.
Having your HDDs automatically turn off after being idle can help save energy and extend the battery life.
When you or anything tries to access a HDD that has been turned off, there will be a delay of a few seconds as the HDD automatically turns back on and spins up before being able to access it.
This tutorial will show you how to change how long HDDs are inactive before automatically turned off in Windows 10 and Windows 11.
S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology; often written as SMART)Â is a monitoring system included in computer hard disk drives (HDDs), solid-state drives (SSDs), and eMMC drives. Its primary function is to detect and report various indicators of drive reliability with the intent of anticipating imminent hardware failures.
This tutorial will show you how to check the current health and SMART status of drives in Windows 11.
A drive letter is a single alphabetic character A through Z that has been assigned by Windows to a physical drive or drive partition connected to the computer to reference the drive by.
If you don’t like the drive letter assigned to a drive, you can change it.
This tutorial will show you how to change a drive letter in Windows 11.
A volume label is the friendly name for a connected drive or volume.
An internal drive will usually be assigned Local Disk as its volume label by default.
A USB flash drive will usually be assigned USB Drive as its volume label by default.
A NTFS or ReFS volume label can be up to 32 characters in length, including spaces. NTFS volume labels retain and display the case that was used when the label was created. A FAT volume label can only be up to 11 characters in length.
This tutorial will show you different ways to rename a drive or volume label to what you want in Window 11.
You can mount (make a drive accessible) in a folder rather than a drive letter if you want. This makes the drive appear as just another folder.
When you mount an internal or external drive in an empty folder, you will be able to access the contents of the drive from the path of the folder. The contents of the drive will still physically be located on the drive. Anything you save into this folder will actually be saved to the drive.
You can mount a drive or volume with or without a drive letter as an empty folder.
This tutorial will show you how to add (assign) or remove (unassign) mount point folder paths for a drive or volume in Windows 11.
Checking your drives for errors every once in a while can help fix some performance issues. Drive errors can usually be caused by bad sectors, improper shutdowns, bad software, corruption, physical damage, etc…
CHKDSK (Check Disk) checks the file system and file system metadata of a volume (drive) for logical and physical errors.
The chkdsk command is used to check the integrity of the file system on the hard drive and make necessary fixes. The command can also fix bad sectors on your hard drive.
Bad sectors are divided into “Soft bad sectors” and “Hard bad sectors”. “Soft bad sectors” are logical bad sectors, and chkdsk can easily fix them. “Hard bad sectors” are due to physical damage to the disk. CHKDSK cannot repair “Hard bad sectors”, but it can mark the sectors to stop any data writing to them and prevent issues.
This tutorial will show you how to run CHKDSK to check a drive for file system errors in Windows 11.
All drives are shown under the This PC group in the navigation pane of File Explorer by default.
Removable drives are shown as separate groups in the navigation pane of File Explorer by default in addition to being shown under the This PC group in the navigation pane.
You could Pin to Quick access the Windows C: drive to also have it under the Home group in the navigation pane.
If you like, you can add the Windows C: Drive as its own separate group to the top or bottom of the navigation pane of File Explorer for even easier and faster access.
This tutorial will show you how to add or remove the the Windows C: Drive in the navigation pane of File Explorer for your account in Windows 11.
A drive letter is a single alphabetic character A through Z that has been assigned to a physical drive or drive partition in the computer to reference the drive by.
This tutorial will show you how to show drive letters before or after drive labels (name) in File Explorer for your account in Windows 10 and Windows 11.
A drive letter is a single alphabetic character A through Z that has been assigned to a physical drive or drive partition in the computer to reference the drive by.
This tutorial will show you how to hide or show drive letters in File Explorer for your account in Windows 10 and Windows 11.
You can Map a network drive to access shared files on it from File Explorer in Windows without having to look for it or type its network address each time.
This tutorial will show you how to disconnect a mapped network drive for your account in Windows 11.
You can Map a network drive to access shared files on it from File Explorer in Windows without having to look for it or type its network address each time.
A mapped network drive has the following characteristics:
This tutorial will show you how to map a network drive for your account in Windows 11.
Optimizing your drives can help your PC run smoother and boot up faster.
Windows 11 includes Optimize Drives that will automatically retrim a SSD or defrag a HDD as needed.
Optimize Drives runs automatically on a weekly schedule at the time set in automatic maintenance. You can also manually run Optimize Drives on demand as needed.
This tutorial will show you how to add Optimize to the context menu of drives in Windows 10 and Windows 11 to make it easier to optimize and defrag drives on demand.
Optimizing your drives can help your PC run smoother and boot up faster.
Windows 11 includes Optimize Drives that will automatically retrim a SSD or defrag a HDD as needed.
Optimize Drives runs automatically on a weekly schedule at the time set in automatic maintenance. You can also manually run Optimize Drives on demand as needed.
This tutorial will show you how to optimize and defragment drives in Windows 11.
Removable drives are shown as separate groups in the navigation pane of File Explorer by default in addition to being shown under the This PC group in the navigation pane.
OS drives and fixed drives (ex: internal drives) will only be shown under This PC, and not separately in the navigation pane.
This tutorial will show you how to add or remove the drives showing twice in the navigation pane of File Explorer for all users in Windows 11.
Windows 11 includes the default General items, Documents, Pictures, Music, and Videos templates used to optimize the layout and view of every drive, folder, or library.
Windows 11 uses Automatic Folder Type Discovery to detect the contents of a folder and automatically optimize the folder for the proper template. If a folder contains a mixture of file types, Windows will use the General items template. If there is an overwhelming number of files with the same file type in a folder, Windows will automatically optimize the folder with the proper template to match the majority.
A template is just a default layout and view, you can customize the layout and view of a folder to how you like in File Explorer.
This tutorial will show you how to manually change the template of a drive, folder, or library for your account in Windows 11.
Storage usage lets you see how your storage is used on a drive and how you can free up space.
This tutorial will show you how to view the storage usage of local storage drives in Windows 11.