HDD picks up as two drives.

[AngryMonkey_]

originally, i had 3 hard drives in my system, and then i decided to get a casing for my 2.5" hdd. then when i plugged it in, it would first say that the usb device (labelled i) was not accessible. and would request to format it. So all i had to was click cancel to formatting then it would open up as a device labelled g. i'd like to get rid of this error, is there any way? (look at picture as well)

[LogicWeasel]

Did you open up your disk management admin window?  It should allow you to change that drive letter or view how it's creating the other letter.

[wONKEyeYEs]

I'm guessing that the external drive has more than one partition on it.

Windows Administrative Tools / Computer Management / Disk Management.

Delete the unwanted partition then Extend the existing good partition to consume the empty partition.

 

 

[AngryMonkey_]

31 minutes ago, wONKEyeYEs said:

I'm guessing that the external drive has more than one partition on it.

Windows Administrative Tools / Computer Management / Disk Management.

Delete the unwanted partition then Extend the existing good partition to consume the empty partition.

So if I delete the partition for "i" then it won't format the drive right?

[Sernefarian]

Personal take? Someone black hatted on you in what appears to me to be a fairly novel way. Do what they suggested and nuke whatever janky hijinks they have going on that partition. Something tells me they managed to get some kind of script link in and elevated to the point where they execute something from that partition at boot or during OS load in order to have a way into your system, or worst case scenario total or near total control of your OS similar to a hypervisor(unlikely as heck due to reality of keeping ahead/up to date on OS updates) though if they are effectively Virutal Machining you from it then it becomes from ym understanding qutie a bit easier for them to toss together a slim Linux, Unix(? probably possible), or other OS install that basically launches your desired OS yet gives them most of the control... they'd probably need to be able to alter your bootloader enough for that.

 

Call me crazy, but those are all possibilities. Anywho... nuke it. Send it to the binary heap in the sky.

[wONKEyeYEs]

6 hours ago, AngryMonkey420 said:

So if I delete the partition for "i" then it won't format the drive right?

It will nuke anything on "i" but leave "g" alone.

[Sernefarian]

Suggest if your tool has the option to do a full overwrite of that  petition to 1s, 0s, or random fill. More passes the better.

Edited July 23, 2018 by Sernefarian
word choice.