Member Avatar for easouza

About two months ago, the icon for one of my external USB hard drives (that I have been using for over a year) turned from the drive icon to a document icon. I can access the drive and it behaves like a hard drive in all situations. My hard disk utility recognizes it as a hard drive and declares that it is in good health.

I use Windows 10 Pro (came with desktop PC) with three external USB hard drives for the bulk of my data: a 2TB Seagate, a 2TB Western Digital and a 5TB Seagate (primarily for local backups). It is the 2TB Seagate that is affected by this icon change. I ejected the drive and restored it and it still shows with the document icon.

I have owned a PC since 1982 and this is the very first time I have seen this occur. While the drive appears to operate just fine, the icon change is very irritating. BTW, it shows properly as a hard drive on my laptop (upgraded to Windows 10 from Windows 7).
I am very curious if this has been experienced by anyone else. If so, is there any way to restore the hard drive icon?

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by Reverend Jim

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Good news: because the icon looks correct on your laptop, the drive itself is fine. The odd icon on your desktop is almost always a stale custom icon rule or cache on that PC. Building on and , here is a clean way to reset everything on Windows 10 without harming data.

Try this checklist (replace X: with your drive letter):

  1. Remove any broken icon rules on the drive.
  • Show hidden items (and protected OS files) in File Explorer.
  • If X:\autorun.inf exists and references an .ico that no longer exists, clear its attributes and remove it:
attrib -h -s -r X:\autorun.inf
del X:\autorun.inf
  • If a root X:\desktop.ini is present and only exists to force a custom icon, remove it too:
attrib -h -s -r X:\desktop.ini
del X:\desktop.ini

Safely eject and reconnect the drive.

  1. Rebuild the icon cache on the desktop PC (this fixes many stubborn icon issues).
    Close all Explorer windows, then run these in an elevated Command Prompt:
taskkill /f /im explorer.exe
del /ah "%LocalAppData%\IconCache.db" 2>nul
del /ah "%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer\iconcache*" 2>nul
start explorer.exe
  1. Check for per-drive overrides in the registry on the desktop.
  • Run regedit and inspect:
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons\X\DefaultIcon
    If it exists and points to a missing file, export the key for backup, then delete that X branch to revert to the default icon.
  1. If the icon persists, assign the drive a new letter in Disk Management and reconnect. That sidesteps any letter-specific override.

These steps usually restore the standard hard drive icon immediately.

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Member Avatar for Reverend Jim

Check the root of the external drive and see if there is a hidden file named desktop.ini. In my My Documents folder it contains

[.ShellClassInfo]
LocalizedResourceName=@%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll,-21770
IconResource=%SystemRoot%\system32\imageres.dll,-112
IconFile=%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll
IconIndex=-235

and in My Music it looks like

[.ShellClassInfo]
LocalizedResourceName=@%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll,-21790
InfoTip=@%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll,-12689
IconResource=%SystemRoot%\system32\imageres.dll,-108
IconFile=%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll
IconIndex=-237

Note the diffent values for IconIindex. My guess is that your desktop.ini files have been created and/or modified to change the icon. You can delete the desktop.ini file if you like but you may have to

attrib desktop -s -h

first to make it visible.

Member Avatar for bobbyraw

Check the root of the external drive for a file name autorun.inf. it will point to an ico file on the root or in anotehr folder that came on the drive from the manufacturer. if the folder or file is missing you will get the default windows 10 icon stored in the registry. you can also change the autorun.inf to point to any ico file you want. download the one you want from the internet. type this in the autorun.inf file on the root of the usb. substitute "icon file name" for the name of the ico file that you choose.
[autorun]
icon="icon file name.ico"

Member Avatar for Reverend Jim

Did you ever solve your problem? If so we would like to know the solution.

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