shared storage keeps losing drive letter upon boot in to Windows, but in Mac OS, it works just fine

By Justin Harris, 24 October, 2023

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps

Not sure if this is the right place for this topic, so feel free to move if need be. I have a 512 gb ssd, divided in three parts, mac os, bootcamp, and shared storage for files I want to access on both operating systems. In Mac OS, the partition is just fine. In Windows, it loses its drive letter after every reboot, and I have to go in to Windows Disk manager and reassign the drive letter. Is it the end of the world? No, but it is very annoying, and an extra step I have to take every single time after booting back in to Windows. Any idea why this is going on? Even better, any idea for how to keep it from happening?
Thanks in advance for your help.

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Comments

By Tyler on Sunday, November 5, 2023 - 21:10

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

What format is the shared partition? I don't use Boot Camp, so don't know the specifics of how shared storage works between the two operating systems, but I do know macOS and Windows handle different formats and file systems differently, with macOS by default creating "Partitions" in the same APFS container as the macOS startup volume, and Windows predominantly using NTFS. I believe macOS natively supports Windows file systems like NTFS and FAT, but I'm not sure what kind of support, if any, the Boot Camp drivers offer for reading and writing to APFS or HFS+ formatted volumes from within Windows.

By Justin Harris on Sunday, November 5, 2023 - 21:10

I actually have the shared drive set up as XFAT, so that shouldn't be a problem. Weirdest thing though.

By Justin Harris on Sunday, November 5, 2023 - 21:10

I'm going to leave this here, because it very well could save someone else's rear end like it did mine.
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/repeated-loss-of-drive-letter-assignment-upon/6dd6edb7-250e-46c2-9f31-05d4ed5db4a5
So, following the instructions, I ran diskpart, and sure enough, my shared storage volume was showing up as hidden. No idea why, but I did the following in Diskpart.
LIST VOLUME
SELECT VOLUME n (where n is the number of the hidden volume, in my case, 0)
ATTRIBUTES VOLUME CLEAR HIDDEN
EXIT
Then, the volume popped up, but this time assigned as E drive, instead of D. I changed the drive, rebooted, and what do you know? It's there, in file explorer. So, not sure why it was showing up hidden in Windows. Hopefully it won't break things on the Mac OS side. If it does, I will post back and let people know, just in case someone else has this problem in the future, but if I don't, you can assume that all is well.