Steps to Unmount a Volume in Windows

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Unmounting a volume in Windows allows you to take it offline and later mount it when needed. This article provides solutions for effectively unmounting volumes of hard disk which can help in better space management.

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Mounting a disk makes it accessible by the system. Unmounting a disk prevents your system from accessing any data and there is no risk of your disk getting disconnected during data transfer. Hence, before you remove your external storage device like a USB flash drive, you should first unmount it to avoid data corruption.

Once your drive is unmounted, other storage devices can access it. Note that the file system will be inaccessible during regular reads and writes.

How to unmount a volume?

To perform unmounting on Windows you can follow the below-mentioned methods

Method 1: Using Disk Management

  • Press Windows+X A context menu opens. Choose Disk Management.
Click on disk management
  • In Disk Management, select the volume that you want to unmount. Right-click that volume and select Change Drive Letter and Paths.
change drive letter
  • Select the volume’s drive letter and click Remove.
click on remove
  • A prompt appears “Are you sure you want to remove this drive letter?” Select Yes.
  • If you are running any programs or applications from that volume, an additional prompt appears “The volume is currently in use. Do you want to continue?” Close all the programs or applications that are using the volume and click Yes. Windows will restart for the volume to be completely unmounted.
prompt to confirm
  • Go back to Disk Management. You can now see that your partition does not have a drive letter.

Your partition is now not affected by accidental writes.

Method 2: Unmount the Drive using Command prompt

  • Open command prompt as administrator.
  • Type the following command “mountvol drive letter: /P ” and click on Enter.
type the mountvol command
  • When the process is completed you can close the command prompt and verify the unmounted volume space.

If you want to move the data to a removable disk, you should mount the volume again.

  • Right-click the unmounted volume and select Change Drive Letter and Paths.
  • Click on Add. Now choose to Assign the following drive letter. You can select a letter from a drop-down on the right. Once you have selected a letter, click OK.

Recover Data with Remo Recover Software

If you accidentally formatted your hard drive or lost data due to corruption in the process of unmounting your hard drive, you can still recover all the data thanks to Remo Recover software.

The software can easily recover data from your unmountable hard drive as well.

Data recovery is possible on all kinds of hard drives, USB flash drives, memory sticks, FireWire Drives, and so on. All kinds of file types can be recovered using Remo Recover. You can sort the recovered data on the basis of name, date, size, and file type.

File systems supported by the software include FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, NTFS5, and ExFAT.

Powerful scanning algorithms of Remo Recover ensure that all your data can be recovered in no time. Once the lost or deleted files have been recovered, you can view them through the Preview feature.

Remo Recover software supports data recovery from inaccessible, RAW, and corrupt partitions as well. You can restore all the data from failed or crashed hard drives too. The data recovery tool can recover data even after re-installation of your Windows Operating system.

An easy user interface ensures all your data can be recovered by following some simple steps.

About the Author: John Harris

With a decade of experience in data recovery, John Harris, Senior Editor at Remo Software, is your go-to specialist. His focus includes partition management, Windows solutions, and data troubleshooting, delivering insightful content that serves both users and search engines. John's expertise shines through in illuminating blog posts, untangling data loss intricacies across diverse storage platforms.…