Disk has the same disk identifiers as one or more disks connected to the system.

Hello,

When I connect my two USB backup disks, I get a warning message in the Windows logs “Disk has the same disk identifiers as one or more disks connected to the system”.

Both disks have the same name. Should I change the names or leave them as they are ?
I've had no problem using both disks at the same time so far.

Thanks for your help.

Windplay87 said:

When I connect my two USB backup disks, I get a warning message in the Windows logs “Disk has the same disk identifiers as one or more disks connected to the system”.

Both disks have the same name. Should I change the names or leave them as they are ?

Click to expand...

The problem isn't the names of the partition, it is that two of your disks have the same disk ID. Whether this is a GUID or a DWORD depends on whether the disk is GPT or MBR. Diskpart can show you the disk ID.



Windows cannot mount two disks that have the same ID, they are supposed to be unique. You can change a disk's ID using Diskpart. On the rare occasions I've seen this changing the ID of one of the disks by just one digit was sufficient to resolve the ID clash.

Thank you for your quick reply.

I can use both my disks at the same time, one with the letter D: and the other E: But they have the same name.
I just get a warning message in the Windows logs when I plug in the second disk.

I made copies between the two this morning with no problems.

If I leave things as they are without changing the ID, will it still work and not cause any problems for the files ?

Windplay87 said:

I can use both my disks at the same time, one with the letter D: and the other E: But they have the same name.
I just get a warning message in the Windows logs when I plug in the second disk.

Click to expand...

In that case the warning may just be referring to the fact that both disks were originally assigned to use the same drive letter, but with both plugged in one has been forced to use a new letter. You could stop the warnings by permanently assigning a different drive letter to one of the disks.

Windplay87 said:

If I leave things as they are without changing the ID, will it still work and not cause any problems for the files ?

Click to expand...

This is not a problem for Windows. It doesn't care what the names are, it identifies which disk is which by its disk ID. It may be a problem for you though, trying to remember which is which

In that case the warning may just be referring to the fact that both disks were originally assigned to use the same drive letter, but with both plugged in one has been forced to use a new letter. You could stop the warnings by permanently assigning a different drive letter to one of the disks.

Click to expand...

OK, thanks for the information. That must be it, because when I plug in the first “Backup” disk (NVME USB) it takes the letter D: and when I plug in the second “Backup” disk (HDD USB) it takes the letter E: The second disk might want to switch to D: hence the warning message.

Otherwise, I'd have to set the second disk to H: to avoid getting the message in the logs.

This is not a problem for Windows. It doesn't care what the names are, it identifies which disk is which by its disk ID. It may be a problem for you though, trying to remember which is which

Click to expand...

But it's still reassuring if it doesn't put my files at risk despite the warning. I just wanted to be sure.

In the end, I don't think I'll touch anything else, just leave the letter D: for one and E: for the other, then ignore the warning.