Windows 10 May 2019 update blocked for anyone using USB or SD storage

Although it is not yet officially released, the Windows 10 May 2019 update is available for Windows users initiated on the Release Preview distribution channel (as well as for MSDN subscribers). So anyone who wants to take a step ahead of the next major version of Windows 10 can do it now unless they have a USB storage connected to their PC.

Due to a noticeable problem, Microsoft is blocking the update for USB or SD storage users. That is, if you have a USB hard drive or a USB flash drive, or an SD card in an SD card reader, the update will not install. Perhaps more strangely, this is the case only if you are currently using the 1803 or 1809 version; Upgrading from 1709 or 1703 (both of which are still supported, at least for Enterprise and Education users) means that everything is going well.

The reason for the update blocking is that it seems inclined to mix the drive letters assigned to the USB and SD storage devices. In other words, although your USB drive could be displayed as "D:" now, it could be renamed "E:" after the upgrade in 1903. Fortunately, there is a simple solution: unplug the drives and remove the memory card. and the installation will proceed normally. You can then reconnect them when the operation is complete.

This is not the first Windows feature update to do special things with the drive letter assignment; Windows 1803, at least for some people, would assign drive letters to the small recovery partitions created by the operating system. The recovery partition is very complete, the users distressed with this problem would then be bombarded with warnings to complain that a reader is very low on disk space. This bug was reported during the development of 1803, but apparently not fixed for this version.

As with so many Windows 10 bugs, the real question is how was this detected only on this last stage of development? USB storage is neither esoteric nor unusual, and a problem of this type will affect many of the users of Windows 10. We can guess. Most beta testers have incrementally updated each new published version and, for some reason, have never encountered the problem. it's only once Microsoft has reached Release Release and people make the leap from 1803 or 1809 to 1903 without all the builds that come up to withstand the onset of the problem . Nevertheless, this is surely something that Microsoft should have tested internally, especially like, above, 1803 also had problems with drive letter assignments. Microsoft should know that this is a problem that needs to be verified before sending a version.