About this tag
A ghost drive is a phantom or duplicate drive letter that appears in Windows Explorer but does not correspond to a physical or logical partition visible in Disk Management. Common causes include leftover drive mappings from software installations, such as Office 2010 trials that create a temporary Q: drive, or unusual mirroring behavior where a single partition appears as two drives with identical content. Users report ghost drives showing 0 bytes of space, being inaccessible, and persisting after uninstalling applications. Troubleshooting methods include checking Disk Management, removing unused drive letters, and editing the registry to delete phantom entries. These issues are often harmless but can be resolved with careful system adjustments.
  1. Trouble

    Windows 8 Unusual drive problem

    I have a Windows XP SP3 computer with something strange going on that I've never seen before (see attachment). Windows explorer shows two drives C:\ and E:\ That wouldn't be particularly strange except there is only one physical drive with a single 1 terabyte partion on it. Disk Management show...
    • Trouble
    • Thread
    • chkdsk data integrity defrag disk management drive issues duplicate files explorer file management ghost drive malware operating system partition storage issues system performance tech support troubleshooting user experience windows forum windows xp
    • Replies: 6
    • Forum: Windows Help and Support
  2. G

    Windows 7 Mysterious 'ghost' drive that doesn't exist, how to get rid of it?

    Hi everyone, I recently installed the Office 2010 trial and it insisted it wanted to be installed in drive Q: (a networked drive) but it had no writing privileges. The only way to coax the installer into installing was to remove Q: from the list of connected drives. After the installation, I...
    • g2010a
    • Thread
    • drive letter drive management error file system ghost drive installation issues network drive office 2010 troubleshooting windows
    • Replies: 3
    • Forum: Windows Hardware
  3. nitewulf

    Windows 7 Phantom Drive showing in Computer

    Somehow I've ended up with a "phantom" local disk Q showing in Computer. It shows as 0 bytes used and 0 free; it cannot be accessed. It does NOT show in either disk management or device manager. It is not my card reader which is removable drive F. I do not have an external drive connected of any...
    • nitewulf
    • Thread
    • computer device manager disk management ghost drive hard drive local disk phantom drive registry system restore uninstall apps
    • Replies: 4
    • Forum: Windows Hardware