Masking the Windows recovery partition drive letter

Once in a while, things go awry in Windows for no apparent reason.
What happened to me today was that the recovery partition started showing up as a drive letter in my system. Unfortunately, that drive letter cannot be removed through the GUI in "Disk management" in control panel. The only way is to go to a command line and use DISKPART. Here is how.

1. Click the start menu
2. Type DISKPART
   
3. Type Ctrl + Shift + Enter to run as administrator
   
4. Type "LIST DISK"
   
5. Select the boot drive, usually disk 0, by typing "SELECT DISK=0"
   
6. Now list the partitions on the drive, by typing "LIST PARTITION" .
   
7. Select the recovery partition from the list . On my system, this was number 4, so I typed "SELECT PARTITION=4"
   
8. List the partition details by typing "DETAIL PARTITION"
9. Note the drive letter . This was N: on my system. Type "REMOVE LETTER=N
10. You are done . Type "EXIT" to leave DISKPART

Here is the output of my actual session :

Microsoft DiskPart version 10.0.14393.0

Copyright (C) 1999-2013 Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: HIGGS

DISKPART> LIST DISK

  Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
  --------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---
  Disk 0    Online          894 GB      0 B        *
  Disk 1    Online         3726 GB      0 B   *    *
  Disk 2    Online         3726 GB      0 B   *    *
  Disk 3    No Media           0 B      0 B
  Disk 4    No Media           0 B      0 B
  Disk 5    No Media           0 B      0 B
  Disk 6    No Media           0 B      0 B
  Disk 7    Online         5589 GB      0 B        *

DISKPART> SELECT DISK=0

Disk 0 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> LIST PARTITION

  Partition ###  Type              Size     Offset
  -------------  ----------------  -------  -------
  Partition 1    Reserved           128 MB    17 KB
  Partition 2    System             100 MB   129 MB
  Partition 3    Primary            893 GB   229 MB
  Partition 4    Recovery           562 MB   893 GB

DISKPART> SELECT PARTITION=4

Partition 4 is now the selected partition.

DISKPART> DETAIL PARTITION

Partition 4
Type    : de94bba4-06d1-4d40-a16a-bfd50179d6ac
Hidden  : Yes
Required: No
Attrib  : 0000000000000000
Offset in Bytes: 959612715008

  Volume ###  Ltr  Label        Fs     Type        Size     Status     Info
  ----------  ---  -----------  -----  ----------  -------  ---------  --------
* Volume 7     N                NTFS   Partition    562 MB  Healthy    Hidden


DISKPART> REMOVE LETTER=N

DiskPart successfully removed the drive letter or mount point.

DISKPART> EXIT

Roland Fantom XR and UM-880 USB interfaces vs Windows 10 64-bit

Roland does not provide drivers for Windows 10 for the above devices. The Windows 8/8.1 drivers do not install properly under Windows 10 .

Some modifications can be made to the drivers to load them successfully. However, this will break the signature check in Windows 10. Thus, this signature check has to be disabled.

The following post explains how to modify the Roland drivers for Windows 10 :
https://www.soundonsound.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=55497

The following link explains how to disable signature check so you can install those drivers :
https://www.top-password.com/blog/how-to-disable-driver-signature-enforcement-in-windows-10-8-7/

Unfortunately, every time Microsoft posts a major update, such as the Creators update, unsigned drivers are disabled, and this entire process has to be repeated.

It would be simple for Roland to update and resign the drivers for Windows 10. Somehow, they don't care, because it won't sell them any more hardware. This is typical of hardware companies, and SAD !

Comkia (Central Computers) Mobi Vault H05 USB 3.1 SATA enclosure vs Toshiba N300 6TB SATA hard drive

This will be a short post. The above combination does not work, period. The enclosure isn't even recognized by the OS when plugged in to the machine. Apparently, this enclosure has a size limit, and 6TB is too much for it. I tried with some older model of USB 3.0 SATA enclosures by Comkia and they did not work either. So, buyer beware. My H05 is going back. I will be looking for another SATA USB 3.1 enclosure without a size limitation.