Windows 10 issue with 'Quick Access' panel on folders

mindzipper

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Joined
Sep 3, 2016
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5
I really didn't expect this.

I had a 3tb drive that was partitioned into two smaller drives. I decided to dump both and bring the drive back into a full drive, obviously losing one drive letter.

The problem now, is I neglected to delete all the quick access shortcuts. I use these quite a bit. But now, once i completed the drives, set the volume letters etc, all of the pre-existing quick access folders are broken. No problem, right click and delete.... nope. on all of the shortcuts that point to now non-existent drives, I cannot edit or delete anything. on all working shortcuts I can right click and 'unpin from quick access' but that option is now gone for the old ones (see screenshots)

I can't figure out any way to delete these.

ideas greatly appreciated.
 

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Solution
Hi and welcome to the forum

Hope neemo's suggestion does the trick. If it doesn't read this:
Not sure what tool you used to re-combine the 2 partitions into 1 large one; but, in W10 you can't access a single drive partition larger than 2TB using MBR disk format. So, if you didn't originally format your 3TB hard drive (both partitions) using the GPT disk format, that is problably your problem. You must have your hard drive formatted to GPT format in order to access a single partition larger than 2TB, which your 3TB certainly is.

Suggest you backup your exiting files on both partitions to other external media, such as a different >3TB hard drive or a Cloud drive such as Microsoft OneDrive or Google SkyDrive...
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You can clear out the quick access links by doing the following
  • Open explorer
  • Navigate to C:\Users\<username>\Appdata\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\AutomaticDestinations
  • Rename or delete the file f01b4d95cf55d32a.automaticdestinations-ms
 
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Hi and welcome to the forum

Hope neemo's suggestion does the trick. If it doesn't read this:
Not sure what tool you used to re-combine the 2 partitions into 1 large one; but, in W10 you can't access a single drive partition larger than 2TB using MBR disk format. So, if you didn't originally format your 3TB hard drive (both partitions) using the GPT disk format, that is problably your problem. You must have your hard drive formatted to GPT format in order to access a single partition larger than 2TB, which your 3TB certainly is.

Suggest you backup your exiting files on both partitions to other external media, such as a different >3TB hard drive or a Cloud drive such as Microsoft OneDrive or Google SkyDrive. Then use a program such as Partition Magic or ISO-Linux GSmartControl (free from UBCD.com) to reformat your 3GB hard drive. Do NOT use an image backup program to backup your files such as Macrium or Acronis, rather use a folder-by-folder backup program such as the free AOEMI Backupper to do this. Restore your files/folders back to the newly GPT formatted 3TB drive with the single partition. Once done, W10 should allow you to delete those Quick Access shortcut links.

Let us know how it turns out,
<<<BIGBEAREJEDI>>>
 
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Solution
You can verify if it's a GPT disk or not.
  • Open an elevated command prompt
  • Type diskpart
  • Type list disk if there is a * under the GPT column for the disk then it is GPT
 
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EXCELLENT! Thank you.

Thankfully I copied/saved the paths for all the others.

funny, even with hidden files shown I had to type those paths in there
 
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yes. what I did was this.

I use RAID5 for data storage (yes I know it's deprecated and am switching soon).. i copied all the files off the other partitions to the RAID. then I deleted the partitions and set the new one up with GPT.

at that point i then used acronis to make an image of the folders from the raid. just so i had redundancy.

can you explain why not to use acronis for this?
 
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FYI I ordered a 5tb external that will replace my RAID5. those drives are all 1tb but slow.

Well i shouldn't say replace yet, I'm going to do some swapping though and drop the RAID
 
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>>>Hi again; sounds like you got your problem fixed! The reason why you shouldn't use Acronis or other Image backup software is that it produces a bit-by-bit "snapshot"of your partition/volume file structure included any damaged or non-functional shortcuts or in your case the old Quick Access folders (which are a type of shortcut). Since the Acronis backup image would include shortcuts to a MBR-formatted drive, replacing that drive or reformatting it with GPT-format as you did, and then doing a Restore from your saved Acronis backup image would also restore the MBR type Quick Access shortcuts, which of course will not work properly on a GPT-formatted drive. You'd just be recreating your problem all over again if you did that. Which you didn't. But, that's why I told you not to use it.<<<
>>>P.S. Don't forget when you buy that new 5TB drive to format it in GPT-format first, so you don't run into this and other problems due to the 2TB MBR limitation we told you about!!<<<

Cheers!
<<<BBJ>>>
 
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