Background:
I'm working on a powershell script to automate installation from a USB stick via WinPE. Because the target systems have several drives, each possibly having a couple partitions, Windows quickly runs out of drive letters. Part of my script unassigns all drive letters, then reassigns only the necessary disks. Right now, I assign hard-coded letters to certain partitions, but I've run into a problem with one of the letters not being unassigned.
The issue is that I somehow have a volume with an assigned drive letter, yet there's apparently no underlying partition, and since Remove-PartitionAccessPath requires a partition object, there's no way to do it from powershell (without resorting to diskpart).
Here's the output of diskpart - you can see the selected disk has no partitions, yet somehow has a volume:
Microsoft DiskPart version 10.0.15063.0
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: MININT-6GI0UNM
DISKPART> list disk
Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 5589 GB 0 B *
Disk 1 Online 5589 GB 0 B *
Disk 2 Online 5589 GB 0 B *
Disk 3 Online 5589 GB 0 B *
Disk 4 Online 5589 GB 0 B *
Disk 5 Online 5589 GB 0 B *
Disk 6 Online 5589 GB 0 B *
Disk 7 Online 5589 GB 0 B *
Disk 8 Online 5589 GB 0 B *
Disk 9 Online 5589 GB 0 B *
Disk 10 Online 5589 GB 0 B *
Disk 11 Online 5589 GB 0 B *
Disk 12 Online 447 GB 0 B *
Disk 13 Online 447 GB 0 B *
Disk 14 Online 232 GB 0 B *
Disk 15 Online 29 GB 29 GB
Disk 16 Online 28 GB 0 B *
DISKPART> sel disk 15
Disk 15 is now the selected disk.
DISKPART> list part
There are no partitions on this disk to show.
DISKPART> detail disk
ATA Hypervisor USB Device
Disk ID: E0623CE6
Type : USB
Status : Online
Path : 0
Target : 0
LUN ID : 0
Location Path : UNAVAILABLE
Current Read-only State : No
Read-only : No
Boot Disk : No
Pagefile Disk : No
Hibernation File Disk : No
Crashdump Disk : No
Clustered Disk : No
Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- --------
Volume 20 E Removable 0 B Unusable
DISKPART>
Here's what happens when I try to remove the letter from powershell:
PS X:\sources> Get-Volume -DriveLetter E | Remove-PartitionAccessPath -AccessPath "E:"
Remove-PartitionAccessPath : The input object cannot be bound to any parameters for the command either because the
command does not take pipeline input or the input and its properties do not match any of the parameters that take
pipeline input.
At line:1 char:29
+ ... t-Volume -DriveLetter E | Remove-PartitionAccessPath -AccessPath "E:"
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo : InvalidArgument: (MSFT_Volume (Ob...rosoft/Wind...):PSObject) [Remove-PartitionAccessPat
h], ParameterBindingException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : InputObjectNotBound,Remove-PartitionAccessPath
PS X:\sources> Get-Volume -DriveLetter E | fl *
OperationalStatus : Unknown
HealthStatus : Healthy
DriveType : Removable
FileSystemType : Unknown
DedupMode : NotAvailable
ObjectId : {1}\\MININT-6GI0UNM\root/Microsoft/Windows/Storage/Providers_v2\WSP_Volume.ObjectId="{63585070-
3cd2-11e7-b877-806e6f6e6963}:VO:\\?\Volume{635850c4-3cd2-11e7-b877-806e6f6e6963}\"
PassThroughClass :
PassThroughIds :
PassThroughNamespace :
PassThroughServer :
UniqueId : \\?\Volume{635850c4-3cd2-11e7-b877-806e6f6e6963}\
AllocationUnitSize : 0
DriveLetter : E
FileSystem :
FileSystemLabel :
Path : \\?\Volume{635850c4-3cd2-11e7-b877-806e6f6e6963}\
Size : 0
SizeRemaining : 0
PSComputerName :
CimClass : ROOT/Microsoft/Windows/Storage:MSFT_Volume
CimInstanceProperties : {ObjectId, PassThroughClass, PassThroughIds, PassThroughNamespace...}
CimSystemProperties : Microsoft.Management.Infrastructure.CimSystemProperties
PS X:\sources> Get-Volume -DriveLetter E | Get-Partition
PS X:\sources> $null -eq (Get-Volume -DriveLetter E | Get-Partition)
True
Powershell version table:
PS X:\sources> $PSVersionTable
Name Value
---- -----
PSVersion 5.1.15063.0
PSEdition Desktop
PSCompatibleVersions {1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0...}
BuildVersion 10.0.15063.0
CLRVersion 4.0.30319.42000
WSManStackVersion 3.0
PSRemotingProtocolVersion 2.3
SerializationVersion 1.1.0.1
I can try to get more details about the contents of the disk in question if necessary.
What could be causing this? Is there a powershell workaround?
Note: I realize it would probably be better to have Windows pick drive letters instead of hard-coding them, but I'm still curious about the mysterious volume.
