What Is This "m:" Drive?

Hello MG Brain Trust.

Getting a head-start on Spring Cleaning, I have been adding drives and shuffling folders.
I was hung up for a couple of days, unable to label a new drive "M:"
With some kind of eventual luck, I named it "S:" and my problem solving days were finally over, probably forever. haha.

To take a graphical look at what files, and what folders are where, I lit up WinDirStat.
What is this "M:" drive???
No wonder I couldn't use "M:" in Disk Management, even though it seemed to be "available"

I opened Disk Manager again to see if there were any clues. Nope.
I ran a cool "Device Cleanup Tool" shared with me here.
Got rid of about 18 devices that are no longer here...
With a hangover from DOS days, although probably no necessary, I even powered-down, and restarted.

Can anyone tell me why WinDirStat is "seeing" "M:", and why Disk Manager is not?
And, what I should or should not do about it?
(Images below)

Expanding the mystery folder in WinDirStat shows information related to my Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Geniusphone.
It also shows this mystery drive as the same size as my "C:" drive, although with far fewer folders.

I dare not do anything without guidance, because my "C:" drive is, you know....my precious "C:" drive.
My phone was not attached (USB) when I ran WinDirStat and Disk Manager.

TIA for your kind wisdom and advice.

DrCarl

 

But it would be being seen by your wireless adapter as a mobile hotspot and also, possibly, by Bluetooth. That's normal and happens here too, though I've never seen a drive letter appear in my equivalent of WinDirStat, Treesize Free. Turn your wireless adapter off temporarily and run WinDirStat again - the drive should disappear.

 

OK. Tried that. Turned phone off. Ran Device Cleanup, too. "M" Drive remains.

 

I asked you to turn off your wireless adapter, not your phone but try rebootring and rerunning WinDirStat

 

OK. Yes, you said "wireless adapter" and I only heard "wireless".
("Wireless" doesn't even rhyme with "phone" - lol)

I was thinking "wireless" while looking at the image I posted that showed this "M" drive's sub folder labeled "SAMSUNG-SM-N910V" which is the kind of phone I have. So, guilty as charged. I turned off my wireless phone.

I'm trying to think real hard what a "wireless adapter" really is, and where I might have one.

I had one in a laptop once. Saw one in the garage in a box the other day.

[thinking] My router sends wireless WiFi signals via WiFi, but that's a router, not a wireless adapter. Maybe I better look this up.

What is a Wireless Adapter?
A wireless adapter is a hardware device that is generally attached to a computer or other workstation device to allow it to connect to a wireless system. Before the advent of consumer devices with built-in Wi-Fi connectivity, devices required the use of wireless adapters to connect to a network.
​

So, not having a wireless adapter, I ran WinDirStat and Disk Manager, and looked around for ANYthing wireless, anywhere.

Wait a minute. First, my original images are embarrassingly blurry in post #1. I hate blurry images.
I'll embed a different link here.

https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-gHpd3VF/0/ccbc7224/XL/i-gHpd3VF-XL.jpg

Second, the reference to SAMSUNG has completely disappeared, yet the mystery drive remains (in WinDirStat - not Windows Explorer, nor Disk Management).

I have tried turning off and on everything I can think of.
Turned the WiFi off on the router, yanked the Bluetooth dongle from the desktop, ran phone in normal and SafeMode, attached with USB and unattached.
I admit that I did not restart my computer with each change.
I did restart WinDirStat each time.

So, I guess this becomes an "academic exercise."
Or, something to bother someone with a mild obsession with solving the puzzle.
There it sits staring at me.
Drive "M:"
Almost a TB of space going to waste.

I wonder what would happen if I copied a file to the Mystery Drive.
Not sure how I could even do that since Windows does not report "seeing" "M:".
Hey, what kind of files are there - the yellow section?
WinDirStat indicates that what is on the mystery drive are ".cwm" files. CaptureWizMedia.
I know, I'll search the entire computer for "*.cwm" files even if Windows Explorer can't see "M".
At least it's something to do to further prove that I don't have a life.
Explorer found the .cwm files, on"S:" ... where they belong.
No trace of "M:"
Now what?

I suppose I should just "move along" since I don't want to break anything.

 

Open Network and Sharing Center and over on the left is Change Adapter Settings. Click that and all your computer's network adapters will show and one of them will be Wireless Network Connection or something similar. Right click that and disable it and then run WinDirStat. M: should have disappeared and if it does it shows that it is an external device (your phone) being detected by the wireless adapter. I'm puzzled though at WinDirStat assigning a drive letter to it as I've never seen that happen.

Remember to re-enable the adapter!

If M: still shows then I have no idea what it is. Hopefully someone else will know.

 

Thanks Earthling.

I get this far, then I am stuck.

https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-Vcv8msm/0/7cfdaab6/L/i-Vcv8msm-L.jpg

 

Open an elevated command prompt and enter the following commands. See if either is a reparse point.

• fsutil reparsepoint query M:
• fsutil reparsepoint query C:

 

query for M: returns "The system cannot find the path specified"
query for C: returns "The file or directory is not a reparse point"

 

I assumed from this that you were connecting by WiFi but it isn't so, your computer has no wireless capability at present and you are connecting by Ethernet cable. Blows my theory sky high - unless the Bluetooth adapter is responsible - try disabling that temporarily.

 

Earthling - sincerely, thanks for your consideration anyway.

 

Turn off the PC and disconnect all drives excluding the boot drive.
Turn on the PC.
What do you see in WinDirStat?

 

Update:
After so long (sorry) I was about to disconnect all drives except C:
First, I installed WinDirStat and moved it over to C: (because it would not run very well with its drive disconnected - lol)
Ran WinDirStat from its new location and see that somehow, the mysterious issue is gone.

So, case closed...until another time.

Thanks for being here!

 

Manually labeling your hard drives names helps.

Like if one drive has windows 7.I name it windows 7 this way i know what the drive is and whats on it.Or if you got drives that have music or videos.Name one video and one music.

Simple

 

Helps what? I know what I have on each drive. Listing types of files seems like a waste...and, I have many different types of files on every drive.

Thanks for the idea, though.