Recently, people have found a common problem that there are duplicate drive letters in their File Explorer. Some people want to remove duplicate drive letters in the navigation pane but don’t know how. This MiniTool post gives you a detailed tutorial.

You may find that when connecting a removable drive to the computer, the drive displays twice in File Explorer. It will be listed under the This PC section and shows as a removable drive again. Microsoft specifically designs this. However, a corrupted file system or conflict drive letters may also lead to this problem. If you are also bothered by this problem and want to remove duplicate drive letters from File Explorer, read and follow the next steps to remove it.  

duplicate drive letter in File Explorer
One of my Win10 PCs has duplicate drives in the left pane of Windows Explorer under MyPC - the primary drive partitions C: and D: and the DVD drive E: only appear once, all the external drives, including the USB ports, appear twice - once below the primary entries and again below the Libraries folder (in the directory tree, not in the folder). This is annoying as it means having to scroll down to find other items such as the Network. How can I remove these entries? - MTC-cadmasteranswers.microsoft.com

Fix Duplicate Drives in the Navigation Pane of File Explorer

You can try to remove duplicate drive letters by modifying Windows Registry keys.

Step 1: Press Win + R to open the Run window.

Step 2: Type regedit into the text box and hit Enter to open Windows Registry Editor.

Step 3: Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Wow6432Node > Microsoft > Windows > CurrentVersion > Explorer > Desktop > NameSpace > DelegateFolders.

delete the corresponding registry key

Please note that if you are running a 64-bit Windows 10/11, you should go to this path:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE> Microsoft > Windows > CurrentVersion > Explorer > Desktop > NameSpace > DelegateFolders.

delete the registry key in 64-bit Windows

Step 4: Find  {F5FB2C77-0E2F-4A16-A381-3E560C68BC83} under the list. Right-click on the registry key and choose Delete from the context menu.

Step 5: In the prompt window, click Yes to confirm.

Then, you can go to File Explorer to check whether the duplicate letters of removable drives are successfully deleted.

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Tips:
You can also add duplicate drive letters in File Explorer by adding the corresponding registry key.
Shift to the DelegateFolders, then right-click on it to choose New > Key to create a new subkey. Rename the newly created folder as  {F5FB2C77-0E2F-4A16-A381-3E560C68BC83}. Double-click on the key on the right pane to change Value data to Removable Drives and click OK to save the change. You need to restart the computer to fully apply the change.

Bonus Tip: Recover Data with MiniTool Power Data Recovery

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Bottom Line

Showing removable drives twice is a default setting in Windows. But some users want to delete additional entries to clean up the interface. This post explains exactly how to remove duplicate drive letters. Hope it can help you.  

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About The Author

Andrea

Position: Columnist

Andrea graduated in English and has a keen interest in the IT industry and questions that arise when computers are used. She is passionate about new things and challenging things and has a wide range of interests like playing guitar, gaming, and crafting.

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