Forum Discussion
OneDrive won't allow installation on fixed D: drive
I hit the same refusal on 8 November and found the cause. Posting it for anyone else stuck here.
OneDrive asks Windows what kind of drive a location is on, and accepts only a fixed or removable disk. On my PC a Windows folder setting, "Local Downloads" ({7D83EE9B-2244-4E70-B1F5-5393042AF1E4}), pointed at the root of D:, and D:\ held a hidden desktop.ini for it. With that, Windows reports D:\ as a folder instead of a fixed disk, and OneDrive refuses every location on the drive with "Your OneDrive folder can't be created in the location you selected". C: was accepted throughout.
To check, run this in PowerShell (not as administrator). Any result is a Windows folder pointing at the root of a drive:
(Get-ItemProperty 'HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders').PSObject.Properties | Where-Object { "$($_.Value)" -match '^[A-Z]:\\?$' } | Select-Object Name, Value
To fix:
1. Point that entry at a subfolder. For example, using the name your check returned:
Set-ItemProperty 'HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders' -Name '{7D83EE9B-2244-4E70-B1F5-5393042AF1E4}' -Value 'D:\Downloads' -Type ExpandString
If you change it through the Downloads folder's Properties > Location instead, click No when Windows offers to move the files: the old location is the whole drive.
2. Delete the hidden desktop.ini at the root of the drive.
3. Sign out and back in, then set up OneDrive and pick the drive. Mine was accepted at once, and OneDrive is matching the existing 649 GB against the cloud without making duplicates.
The desktop.ini dated from January and OneDrive accepted the drive until 8 November, so something changed on Microsoft's side. Microsoft: OneDrive should either accept these drives again or say why it refuses them. A message naming the cause would have saved me two working days.
a { text-decoration: none; color: #464feb; } tr th, tr td { border: 1px solid #e6e6e6; } tr th { background-color: #f5f5f5; }
Based on your description, this does not appear to be a Windows or hardware issue.
The key point is that OneDrive accepted D:\ from September 20 through September 23 using the same OneDrive build and the same Windows installation, then suddenly began rejecting the location on September 24 without any reported local changes.
Since Windows correctly identifies the drive as a fixed NTFS volume and other applications (such as Dropbox) continue to use the drive normally, the behavior suggests that OneDrive may now be classifying the drive differently than before.
A few questions may help narrow this down:
- Does D:\ appear as a fixed drive in Windows Disk Management?
- Is the SSD connected through a PCIe NVMe adapter that exposes any "removable" characteristics to Windows or the storage controller driver?
- Have you checked whether the SSD manufacturer's driver or firmware was updated around the time the issue appeared?
One additional test would be to create a completely new OneDrive account configuration and attempt to select a new empty folder on D:\. Since you have already tested both existing folders and a newly created folder, and OneDrive still rejects the entire drive while accepting E:\, the issue appears to be associated with how OneDrive is evaluating the drive itself rather than the folders stored on it.
Given that E:\ (a similar NVMe SSD) is accepted while D:\ is not, I would be interested to know whether OneDrive engineering recently changed the logic used to determine which storage devices qualify as supported locations. From the information provided, it seems possible that an internal NVMe drive connected through a PCIe adapter is now being identified differently than it was previously.
If possible, please provide a screenshot of:
- Windows Disk Management
- The OneDrive error message
- Device Manager → Disk drives
That would help determine whether OneDrive is detecting the drive as removable storage even though Windows presents it as a fixed internal drive.