Mapping device identifiers to drive letters in Windows.

If you get an error message similar to The file system structure on the disk is corrupt and unusable. Please run the chkdsk utility on the volume \Device\HarddiskVolume1. there may be trouble matching the identifier \Device\HarddiskVolume1 to a drive letter (is it C:?) or an actual physical device.

Most of the time, finding the corresponding drive letter (X:) is good enough because you can then look it up in the Disk Management console.

However, the trouble is that \Device\HarddiskVolume1 is not referenced outside the system event log.

To find out the list of mappings, download and run the Microsoft Product Support Reports utility from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?DisplayLang=en&id=24745

When it asks you what to collect, you only need the most basic option, something like "Basic information" or "General information". When done, choose to "Open and view the result" - Windows Explorer will launch and open a folder with a file "Master Report.xml" and subfolder "General".

Go down to "General" folder and find the file "ComputerName-DOSDevices.TXT". Open it and you get your mapping list at the very top of the file.

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