As further proof that Microsoft really needs to up its quality assurance game, news has filtered out via a support article that if you use SD cards, external USB hard drives or USB sticks, you will be blocked from installing the Windows 10 May 2019 update. The reason as Microsoft puts it is “inappropriate drive reassignment”:
Inappropriate drive reassignment can occur on eligible computers that have an external USB device or SD memory card attached during the installation of the May 2019 update. For this reason, these computers are currently blocked from receiving the May 2019 Update. This generates the error message that is mentioned in the “Symptoms” section if the upgrade is tried again on an affected computer.
Example: An upgrade to the May 2019 Update is tried on a computer that has the October 2018 update installed and also has a thumb drive inserted into a USB port. Before the upgrade, the device would have been mounted in the system as drive G based on the existing drive configuration. However, after the upgrade, the device is reassigned a different drive letter. For example, the drive is reassigned as drive H.
Why does this matter? Apparently a whole lot of software is out there that is designed to look for specific drive letters. Thus this is not good. The problem will only really affect users who have booted Windows from external storage. Raspberry Pi users for example. Fortunately the workaround is pretty simple, eject your external storage drives first until this is fixed in a future update.
You have to wonder how many times Microsoft can serve stuff like this up that are complete head scratchers before Windows 10 users run to the Apple Store to buy Macs…. Again.