change letter assignment

How to assign permanent letters to drives on Windows 10

You can assign drive letters manually, and in this guide, we show you how on Windows 10.

On Windows 10, when connecting a removable storage device or an internal hard drive, the system detects and assigns a drive letter automatically to make it usable. However, when reconnecting an external drive (such as a USB flash drive or SD or microSD cards), the system can end up assigning a different letter, which can be annoying.

If you want to see the same drive letter on a particular device, you can manually assign a permanent letter to any drive connected to your computer, and on Windows 10 , you can do this in at least three different ways, using Disk Management, Command Prompt, or PowerShell.

Using this approach will prevent Windows 10 from assigning a new letter or trying to set a letter already in use, which can cause conflicts. Also, it helps to select a drive letter that makes more sense to you.

In this Windows 10 guide, we walk you through several methods to manually assign a permanent letter to a drive, as long as you're connecting the drive to the same device and the letter isn't already in use.

How to assign a drive letter using Disk Management

How to assign a drive letter using command prompt, how to assign a drive letter using powershell.

To manage drive letters with the Disk Management tool, use these steps:

Open Start .
Search for Create and format hard disk partitions and click the top result to open the Disk Management experience.
Right-click the drive and select the Change Drive Letter and Paths option.

Click the Change button.

Select the Assign the following drive letter option.
Use the drop-down menu to assign a new drive letter. Quick tip: To avoid the system trying to assign the same letter to another drive, it's a good idea to start adding letters in backward order. For instance, instead of using D, E or F, it better to start with Z, Y or X when assigning a new letter.

Click the OK button.
Click the OK button again.

Once you complete these steps, the drive will permanently retain the assigned letter, even after reconnecting it. However, if you connect the drive to another device, it may receive a different letter.

While the easiest way to assign a new drive letter is to use Disk Management, you can also use DiskPart in Command Prompt to perform the same task.

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To assign a drive letter using Command Prompt, use these steps:

Search for Command Prompt , right-click the result, and then select the Run as administrator option.
Type the following command to start DiskPart and press Enter : diskpart
Type the following command to list all the available volumes and press Enter : list volume
Type the following command to select the volume (drive) to assign a new letter and press Enter: select volume 3 In the command, make sure to change "3" to the number that represents the drive on your device.
Type the following command to assign a new drive letter, and press Enter : assign letter=Z The command assigns the letter "Z" to the drive assuming it's available. However, you need to make sure to change the letter for the one that you want to use.

After completing these steps, similar to Disk Management, every time you reconnect the storage to the same device, Windows 10 should assign the same letter automatically.

Alternatively, you can also use PowerShell to change a drive letter on Windows 10 using these steps:

Search for PowerShell , right-click the result, and then select the Run as administrator option.
Type the following command to list the available drives and press Enter : Get-Disk
Type the following command to assign a permanent letter to the drive and press Enter : Get-Partition -DiskNumber 1 | Set-Partition -NewDriveLetter Z In the command, make sure to change "1" to the number that represents the drive that you want to modify, and change "Z" for the new letter that you want to use.

Once you complete the steps, the drive will be accessible through File Explorer using the letter that you assigned, and Windows 10 won't try to change it.

Updated March 7, 2019: We revised this guide to make sure it's current with the latest version of Windows 10.

More Windows 10 resources

For more helpful articles, coverage, and answers to common questions about Windows 10, visit the following resources:

Windows 10 on Windows Central – All you need to know
Windows 10 help, tips, and tricks
Windows 10 forums on Windows Central

Mauro Huculak has been a Windows How-To Expert contributor for WindowsCentral.com for nearly a decade and has over 15 years of experience writing comprehensive guides. He also has an IT background and has achieved different professional certifications from Microsoft, Cisco, VMware, and CompTIA. He has been recognized as a Microsoft MVP for many years.

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Change a drive letter

6 contributors

Applies to: Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows Server 2022, Windows Server 2019, and Windows Server 2016

If you want to change a drive letter assigned to a drive, or you have a drive that doesn't yet have a drive letter, use Disk Management to change it. You can also mount the drive in an empty folder so that it appears as a folder. For more information, see Mount a drive in a folder .

If you change the drive letter of a drive that already contains Windows or apps, apps might have trouble running or finding the drive. We suggest not changing the drive letter of a drive that already contains Windows or apps.

The following steps show how to change the drive letter.

Open Disk Management with administrator permissions.

In Disk Management, select and hold (or right-click) the volume on which you want to change or add a drive letter, and then select Change Drive Letter and Paths .

Screenshot showing the Disk Management window with the Change Drive Letter and Paths feature selected.

If you don't see the Change Drive Letter and Paths option or it's grayed out, the volume either isn't ready to receive a drive letter or it's unallocated and needs to be initialized . It might also be that the drive isn't accessible, which is the case with EFI system partitions and recovery partitions. If you've confirmed that your volume is formatted with a drive letter that you can access but you're still unable to change it, that's beyond the scope of this article. We suggest contacting Microsoft Support or the manufacturer of your PC for more help.

To change the drive letter, select Change . To add a drive letter if the drive doesn't already have one, select Add .

Screenshot of the Change Drive Letter and Paths dialog.

Select the new drive letter and choose OK . Then select Yes when prompted about how programs that rely on the drive letter might not run correctly.

Screenshot of the Change Drive Letter or Path dialog that shows how to assign a new drive letter.

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Additional resources

How to Change Drive Letter in Windows 11: A Step-by-Step Guide

If you’re looking to change a drive letter in Windows 11, you’re in luck! It’s a straightforward process that only takes a few minutes. You can do it through the Disk Management tool, which lets you assign a new letter to any of your drives. Just follow these simple steps to get it done.

How to Change Drive Letter in Windows 11

Changing a drive letter in Windows 11 will help you organize your drives better and make them easier to identify. Here are the steps to change a drive letter:

Step 1: Open Disk Management

Type “Disk Management” in the search bar and click on “Create and format hard disk partitions.”

Disk Management is the tool you’ll use to change the drive letter. It gives you a visual layout of all your drives.

Step 2: Locate the Drive

Find the drive for which you want to change the letter.

Scroll through the list of drives in Disk Management until you find the one you want to modify. Take note of its current letter.

Step 3: Right-click the Drive

Right-click on the drive and select “Change Drive Letter and Paths.”

A context menu will pop up when you right-click. This menu lets you access different settings for the drive, including changing its letter.

Step 4: Click “Change”

In the window that appears, click the “Change” button.

This action will bring up another window where you can select a new drive letter.

Step 5: Choose a New Letter

Select a new drive letter from the dropdown menu and click “OK.”

Make sure to choose a letter that’s not already in use by another drive. This will avoid any conflicts.

Step 6: Confirm Your Choice

Click “Yes” to confirm the change when prompted.

Windows will ask you to confirm the change. Just click “Yes” to finalize it.

After completing these steps, your drive will have the new letter you assigned to it. This can help you better organize your drives and make them easier to find.

Tips for Changing Drive Letter in Windows 11

Backup First: Always create a backup of important data before making changes to your drives.
Choose Wisely: Avoid commonly used drive letters like A, B, and C to prevent conflicts.
Reboot if Needed: Sometimes a reboot is necessary for the changes to take full effect.
Avoid Network Drives: Changing letters on network drives can cause connectivity issues.
Remember New Letter: Make sure to update any shortcuts or programs that rely on the old drive letter.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why would i need to change a drive letter.

Changing a drive letter can help you organize your storage better or resolve conflicts with software that expects a drive to be a certain letter.

Can I change the drive letter of my system drive (C:)?

No, it’s generally not recommended to change the drive letter of your system drive, as it can cause your operating system to malfunction.

Will changing a drive letter affect my files?

No, changing the drive letter won’t affect your files themselves. However, shortcuts or programs pointing to the old drive letter will need to be updated.

What if the letter I want to use is already taken?

You will need to assign a different letter that is not in use. You can free up a letter by changing the drive letter of the currently assigned drive.

Do I need to restart my computer after changing a drive letter?

Most of the time, the change will take effect immediately. However, sometimes a reboot is required for the changes to fully apply.

Open Disk Management.
Locate the drive.
Right-click the drive.
Click “Change.”
Choose a new letter.
Confirm your choice.

Changing a drive letter in Windows 11 is easier than you think! Whether you’re doing it to resolve a conflict, better organize your files, or just because you prefer a certain letter, Disk Management makes the process straightforward. Just remember to choose a letter that’s not in use, back up any important data beforehand, and restart your computer if necessary.

Now that you know how to change a drive letter on Windows 11, why not give it a try? It’s a small tweak that can make a big difference in how you interact with your computer. And if you’re curious about more ways to customize your Windows experience, there’s a whole world of tips and tricks out there waiting for you. Happy computing!

Matthew Burleigh has been writing tech tutorials since 2008. His writing has appeared on dozens of different websites and been read over 50 million times.

After receiving his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Computer Science he spent several years working in IT management for small businesses. However, he now works full time writing content online and creating websites.

His main writing topics include iPhones, Microsoft Office, Google Apps, Android, and Photoshop, but he has also written about many other tech topics as well.

Read his full bio here.

How to Assign / Change Drive Letter in Windows 10

We show you how to change the drive letter in CMD, DIsk Management, PowerShell, and Registry editor in Windows 10.

Table of Contents:

Windows 10 helpfully assigns drive letters to disks as they're added, but they aren't always the most logical choices. While we all know that C: is the system drive, it doesn't make quite as much sense to have D: as your games drive or E: as your media drive. Luckily it's quite easy to change a drive letter in Windows 10, and we're going to walk you through the process today.

How does Windows 10 drive letter assignment work?

For the most part, Windows 10 automatically assigns letters to drives as they're connected, in alphabetical order. However, there are a few exceptions to this rule that may leave some users confused.

As mentioned earlier, C: is always reserved for the system drive, but A: and B: are reserved too, for rarely used floppy drives. Because of Windows automatic assignment, you may have also noticed that Windows changes the drive letter of your USB stick if you've connected another before it.

If you want letters that are easier to identify in bios or don't want your USB letters jumping around, it's quite easy to permanently change a drive letter in Windows 10 to something of your choosing. We're going to cover a few different ways today, including how to change the drive letter in CMD.

How to Change Drive Letter in Windows 10 via Disk Management

The most user-friendly way to assign drive letters in Windows is through the Disk Management interface, which is relatively easy to use.

How to Change Drive Letter in CMD using a DISKPART Disk Management Command

Though it's not quite as user-friendly, it can be much faster to change a drive letter with Command Prompt.

Windows 10 - Open Elevated Command Prompt

How to Change Drive Letter in Windows 10 with a PowerShell Disk Management Command

Those more familiar with PowerShell can use this method instead to achieve the same result.

How to Change / Assign a Drive Letter via the Registry Editor

Alternatively, if none of the above methods worked or you're just feeling brave, you can modify the drive letter via the registry. Just be sure to read our safe registry editing guide first.

If you enjoyed this guide, you may want to consider enabling or disabling disk caching or turning on BitLocker for your newly customized drives.

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The Disk Management tool in Windows gives you an easy-to-use graphical interface to dealing with partitions and drive letters , but what if you want to just quickly change a drive letter on the command prompt? The diskpart utility makes it easy.

You'll need to start by opening an administrator mode command prompt -- type cmd into the search box, and then right-click and choose Run as administrator, or use the CTRL + SHIFT + ENTER keyboard shortcut.

Once there, run the diskpart command, and then type in the following to list out the volumes on your system.

list volume

You'll want to note the volume number next to the drive that you want to change the letter of. In our case, that number is 3.

Now we'll use the select volume command to tell diskpart to make changes to that volume. If your drive number is different, you'll want to replace the 3 with the number in your configuration.

select volume 3

You should see a message that the volume is now selected.

At this point you can easily assign a new drive letter. Just type in this command, substituting R for the drive letter you'd like to use:

assign letter=R

Make sure to hit enter once you're done, of course.

Once you've made that change, your drive should show up again as a new device, and be available for browsing immediately.

If you want to unassign a drive letter in order to hide the drive, you can also use the remove letter command in the same way. We wouldn't necessarily advise doing this, of course.

Don't bother trying to change your C: drive, because that's not going to work.

Maintenance & Optimization
Command Prompt & PowerShell

How to change drive letter using Settings on Windows 10

You can now change the drive letter for a partition using the “Manage Disks and Volumes” tools in Settings, and here's how on Windows 10.

On Windows 10, each drive you connect to the computer gets assigned a letter automatically to identify the device and make it accessible. However, sometimes, you may need to change the drive letter manually for many reasons.

For example, if you connect a drive (USB flash drive, external hard drive, or secondary hard drive) that was formatted on another device, the drive letter may conflict with another storage device on your computer. You prefer using a specific letter for a drive. Or you’re trying to organize the letters in a specific order.

Whatever the reason it might be, starting with build 20175 (Dev Channel) , Windows 10 introduces a new experience to manage disks and volumes from within the Settings app, which also includes the ability to change the letter of a drive. (Technically, the partition inside the drive receives the letter, not the device. Since if the drive doesn’t have a formatted partition, no letter will be assigned and won’t be accessible.)

In this guide , you’ll learn the steps to change the drive letter using the “Manage Disks and Volumes” tools available on Windows 10 .

Change drive letter on Windows 10

To change the drive letter with Manage Disks and Volumes in the Settings app, use these steps:

Open Settings on Windows 10.

Click on System .

Click on Storage .

Under the “More storage settings” section, click the Manage Disks and Volumes option.

Select the drive with the partition you want to change the letter.

Select the partition.

Click the Properties button.

Click the Change drive letter button.

Use the drop-down menu and select the new letter.

Click the OK button.

Once you complete the steps, the drive’s partition will now start using the new letter.

Just remember that you can’t change the letter of the partition where Windows 10 is installed, which is usually labeled as “C”, and you shouldn’t try to assign a letter to the system reserved partitions.

If the settings are not available, it’s because you are not running the version of the operating system that includes the tool. The Manage Disks and Volumes settings are available starting with Windows 10 build 20175 or higher releases.

In the case that you’re using an older version or an older release, such as Windows 8.1 or Windows 10, then you’ll need to use the Disk Management console, or Command Prompt or PowerShell to change the drive letter.

Mauro Huculak is a Windows How-To Expert who started Pureinfotech in 2010 as an independent online publication. He has also been a Windows Central contributor for nearly a decade. Mauro has over 15 years of experience writing comprehensive guides and creating professional videos about Windows and software, including Android and Linux. Before becoming a technology writer, he was an IT administrator for seven years. In total, Mauro has over 21 years of combined experience in technology. Throughout his career, he achieved different professional certifications from Microsoft (MSCA), Cisco (CCNP), VMware (VCP), and CompTIA (A+ and Network+), and he has been recognized as a Microsoft MVP for many years. You can follow him on X (Twitter) , YouTube , LinkedIn and About.me . Email him at [email protected] .

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How to assign a drive letter in Windows 10

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When you connect a new drive to your PC, Windows automatically assigns the next available letter after C, which is normally used for your system drive. So an external hard drive or USB thumb drive could end up as D, E, F, or whatever, depending on how many drive letters are already being used.

This is all well and good, but what if you want to assign the drive a letter? Maybe you want to use M for your music files or X for your top-secret X-Files. Here’s how in Windows 10.

Ensure that the drive you’re relettering isn’t in use and that no files from that drive are open.
Right-click on the Start button.
Click Disk Management to open the Disk Management console.
Right-click the volume that has the drive letter you want to change.
Click Change Drive Letter And Paths.
Click the Change button.
Choose from a list of available drive letters. (Don’t use A or B, which have historically been reserved for floppy drives and can sometime confuse older software.)
Click Yes if a popup windows appears asking if you really want to do this.
Close the Disk Management console.

You may need to restart your machine for the change to take effect, but once you do the drive will use the new letter.

More Windows tips…

How to turn on or off hibernate in Windows 10
Regain hard disk space by using Windows Update Cleanup in Windows 7 and 8.x
Restore a Windows XP backup in Windows 8
How to replace SkyDrive with Libraries in Windows 8.1
Pro tip: Use an optical Recovery Drive in Windows 8.1

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How to Reassign Drive Letters in Windows

They aren’t cast in stone..

Reassign drive letters

Disk manager.

This will bring up the Disk Management tool.

Having that second drive assigned “L:” seems somewhat odd, 1 so let’s change it.

Changing an assigned drive letter

The resulting dialog will display all the drive letters currently assigned; in my case, L:.

You can exit the Disk Management tool. Reboot if you were warned earlier about the drive being in use.

Multiple letters and paths

You might infer from the interface that you can assign multiple drive letters to the same drive. You cannot. If you try to Add without Removing first, the ability to assign a drive letter will be grayed out.

An important word about C:

Do not change the drive letter of your system drive. In most cases, that is C:.

When Windows was installed, it was installed onto the drive C:, and doing so will have created many, many references to C: that simply changing the drive letter will not update. It’s possible your machine will not even boot if you change the drive letter of C:.

About A: and B:

Use them if you like. Other than feeling a little odd to have disks “before” the C: drive, there’s no longer any reason not to use them.

Footnotes & References

Podcast audio, related video, 83 comments on “how to reassign drive letters in windows”.

I partition my 300gb drive and have got to n:/ so far. To avoid problems if I increase/reduce partitions I reserve x,y and z for cd and dvd. Sometimes if you change these and try to run a programme installed when the drive letter was F:/ there can be a problem.

How easy was that! – Well done it worked and I have no further problems – Thanks Leo

How brilliant are you! How brilliant is knowledge! I have just spent 4 1/2 hours on the net and speaking to computer buffs searching for the answer to change drive letters (too complicated to explain why). CANNOT BE DONE – CHANGE THE BIOS – ALTER JUMPERS etc. etc. You managed it in under 2 minutes!!! (After I found you)You are wasted and should be as accesable as a screwdriver. You are now No1 Bookmark Thankyou Kindest regards

Regards, PJ Baron

Oh my i’m so glad that i found you. I have spent 4 days tring to find out why my computer seen my flash drive but didnt show up when i went to my computer. well to keep it short my dvd drive and my flash drive had the same letter so i plugged in my flash drive and did just what you told me and now it works fine thank you ever so much…

That was great help……….

Thanks you soooo much. I have been strugeling to find a easy to understand explination for 5 days now, your pictures and explinations are awesome. Thanks very much

I have the same problem as the question on your website — My drive letters are inverted C and D, so my computer looks through my D drive which it thinks is C to get to C which is marked as D, how can I fix this? (Posted by Sheila, 9-25-06) Were you able to answer this?

Dude. Thanks for the drive switcheroo help. I never knew this stuff and I really appreciate your help, and all the hard work that you put into this site. But, it shouldn’t be called “Ask Leo.” You could name it something comical like “Ask Beardo.” That would be more memorable and funnier. Beards are awesome to the max.

HI This info was helpful but I’m still having a problem with reassigning the drive letter. For some reason when I installed XP it named my boot drive F: and my second drive C:. Before the change in operatiing systems they were boot: C:, and the second was D:Storage. It let me change my storage drive letter, but won’t let me change my boot drive from F to C. Any suggestions? Thanks

iD8DBQFF7OeRCMEe9B/8oqERAqFLAKCMVvnwnKE/sgEMJmQKQr0w/rF1MQCeMd5f CE6OVOs/3gjO7ouPdDFJBRs= =482d —–END PGP SIGNATURE—–

I appreciate it Leo. You’ve made something that most people make out to be a four hour expedition through cmd a 20 second switch. You are now bookmarked bro.

But my system always forgets the new drive letter assignments on my CDROM & CDRW drives. Everytime I boot up, the drive letters have changed back to the first available letters above my HDDs’ partitions. To match my older computer’s CDROM & CDRW drives’ letters V: and T:, I have done the disk management drive letter change routine over and over, but each time I reboot these two drive come back as M: & N:. Additionally, Roxio’s (EMC8) drag-to-disk will not let you change the non-existent M: to T: so that I can use it to eject, format, etc. It holds on to the erroneous M: even though no M: exists resulting in a rediculous message such as “Drive is Busy” when I try to use it to eject a CDRW. EMC8 “Home” properly shows the CDRW drive as T: but apparently Drag To Disk checks only during it’s startup process and retains what it found at startup — the erroneous M:. Help!

I reassign drive letters to the way i need them. then everytime i reboot they change back??? why??? I just installed new raid sata hard drive. My raptor which has 200 gigs of info and audio/video session files on it needs to be set at drive D!! for some reason the dvd drive wants that letter evrytime i reboot??? help please!!???

Sincerly Kenny P.S I read the letters above but I don’t understand it too well.

What about the A: (floppy) drive. I have a computer that is only for use with a particular program. In the program it asked to “backup” and dose so on a floppy. It takes forever. If I could assign the USP card as the a: it would make things so much easier.

thanks Leo and all those great people posting helpful information on the internet! Always amazed how easy it is to find info … thanks to those that devote time to helping others!

Is there any way I can swap my C: and D: or C: and E: as I really want to remove my old drive before it fails???

I agree with Mike French. The site should be called “Ask Beardo” because it makes so much more sense and would be funnier than just boring “Ask Leo”. Thanks for the info!

Many Thanks Colin Hudson

I tried reassignment but only got letters to change that are after the two that are missing.I have HP M370n Media Center.My Dvd writer Cd writer combo wont recognize cds /Mp3s that I recorded on it and shows up at 0 bytes like nothing is on it but there is.Also both my combo player/record and my other HP CD writer that I installed myself after the factory CD rom player quit has reassigned what was formerly E: 300n and F:HP 8000n to G:compactflashI/II – Cd Drive and H: smart media nad has the icons of both by them yet my smart media and compact flash is still L: and M: I cant figure out how to switch them back with icons and make them E and F again.I tried your method but it wont let me change to E or F as those letters seem to be missing.Any clues?Also I cant find updated drivers for 300n.

I bought a new Toshiba notebook, in order to run some of the old software.. I had to partition the HDD with a D: drive.. so, as required.. I had changed the CD ROM drive to E: drive.. after few days of struggle, everything is working.. all in a sudden.. I lost my E: drive?? now I have removed D: drive.. I mean removed the whole partition.. but I still can’t see my CD ROM drive.. it is really frustrating.. anyone had this experience.. any solution? thanks for all your help. Gs

My problems that I posted on March 21, 2007 seem to have finally resolved themselves. My personally assigned drive letter T: for the CDRW & V: for the read only CD player seem to be staying that way between boots now. Must have been corrected in a Microsoft update or something.

Many thank, you have been a great help. Pesky computers!!!

Thankyou very much, that’s exactly what i needed to do.

ok i got a dell 1100 inspiron won’t read dvd/cd rom i tryed updating driver, roll back,and last but not least changing the drive letter. i was thinking unstilling the software and redownloading from dell s website u got any other methods i could try???

hi i have an ifriends computer and i just installed a super multi dvd rewriter but now its sayin cd drive file system unknown and i have zero bytes on my drive d im not to good with computers so im kind of stuck is there something i have dones wrong please help if u can thanks!!

What a brill web site. After days of worrying your answers solved my problem in minutes.

Thanks! This help tool came in VERY handy!

This is just what I needed to know. Thank you.

Originally I’d been trying to access some files on my USB memory stick and it wouldn’t show up in “my computer” so I searched for why this would happen and because I already had a mapped network drive with the same letter I now know that it will only recognise one drive with that letter at a time… the page in question (no idea what page it was specifically) said change the drive letter assigned to it but didn’t tell me how. This page did :o)

Hi.. I want to install Windows XP on my 80GB external HardDisk..Pls suggest me proper steps for same..also I came to know that even if I do it, the OS when booted frm HDD will be very slow..as it will use processor from PC!! Is it the case ??

hi leo, i have recently been attacted by a worm called ‘silly dc’it changes the drive paths of the c and d drives i think i have cleaned it all up, but i am still getting a reference to ‘ resycled\boot’ as the path for the c and d drive how do i change that??? thanks in advance Alex ps im using xp pro with service pack 1

Your directions to change drive letters is very easy to carry out. I have a problem because my D: drive is shown as (Z)(D) I would like to get rid of the (Z). I am not sure wether to follow what you say or wether I would have problems I have sbsribed to your site and am waiting for the email Thanks for a very good site…Brian

Does not work in my case. I have G: drive and want to change it to D:, it does change my letter but after the boot the paths are the same linked to G so all my programs installed on G: are unaccesible.

i ve a mini laptop wit 2gb HDD.I CANT RUN ALL OTHERAPPLICATIONS COS THE HDD SPACE IS SMALL.I TRIED AN OS ON AN ETERNAL HARDRIVE.AFTER FORMATING AND COPYING OF FILES N BOOTING TO INSTALL THE WINDOWS ITS SHOWING ME A BLUE SCREEN .CAN GO FUTHER THAN DAT.WHAT MUST I DO

Very easy to do. Who knew.

I installed a new c drive but it came up as H How can i get it to C ? I unhooked My card reader and my burner rebooted still comes up as H.What can I do ?

Thanks man! My CD drive came up as Z! Without any drives between it! Strange… But fixed now!

P.S. It really works on Windows 7!

Great article, you helped fix a minor emergency. Thanks very much.

After selecting a new drive letter for my external hard drive (I want P instead), I get an error message that says “The parameter is incorrect.” Any ideas why?

To clarify, I’m on a brand spankin’ new Asus laptop with Windows 7, and just about the only thing I’ve done is plug in my external hard drive and load Picasa. (I need the drive to stay the same letter for Picasa.) The laptop says the drive is D: for that external hard drive, and I’m I’m used to D being an important internal hard drive but I’m not sure how this laptop’s set up. Could that be why selecting P doesn’t work? (And I tried Z and it doesn’t work either.)

It turns out that I can use M, just not P or Z or Q. Strange. But M works, so I’m going with it! Thanks for this helpful article.

my h drive has been relabelled j but when i go to the drop down box in disk management it opffers me a,b then from j onwards… why has it skipped H ? i need to relabel it H..help im [ID deleted] on twitter thanks

Thank you Leo. You have saved me so much fruitless messing around on my machine to keep my portable hard drive with F assigned. Thank you, your advice was absolutely spot on.

My computer detects the dvd and the cd as different units, and they are the same. One as F and the other as Z but i need to use z as a network connection. The problem is that i can only see the dvd drive in disk management so i can only change the F. How can i change the letter of the Z cd drive?

i had windows vista in my laptop.i put out the internal hard disc and i made to it a format with a docking stasion.the problem now is that i cant give the letter c again in this disc because its allready on the lap top that the docking stasion was on.now i am tyrying to run windows with thios hdd and they stop and message telling me that is not any hdd in the lap top

Hey, I already passed the point where I can stop. Your warning re C:\ drive should be stated early in the document!

Thanks Leo you just saved me a lot of hours M

Brilliant straight forward answer. Saved hours of frustration trying to reset drive letters. Thanks Leo.

Thanks so much, Leo. I have 3 EHDs and my categories in ACDSee are assigned to one of these so when the letters changed, I lost my ability to go to those searched files. Great tutorial! You’re wonderful! PS: I always read through my recipes before starting to make sure I have everything I need. Sorry Cyberpilot. I hope nothing drastic happened.

my c drive is 1.95gb and my d drive is 35.3 thats how much they can hold not how much free storage there is and my pc is crapping out! please help, {email address removed}

@Ben You should be able to combine the 2 partitions into one with a partitioning utility

http://www.paragon-software.com/home/pm-express/

It is wonderful and I changed my CD/DVD drives to G: and H: long time ago but Windows-10, creates an artificial drive it calls {system reserved” and as I changed one of my drives holding major data to the same letter it had for System Reserved, I had difficulties getting Image Backups and then Restore from these Backups, as they insisted on using the same letter I had before for the then System Reserved. Now, in my Image Backups, avoiding this confusion, I back up C: Only and forget about E: which is actually replaced by J: and E: is a healthy relatively large HDD of 2 TB. My Backup/Restore uses Acronis 2018. which in its memory always included my old E: as the System Restore for C: and not the current J: Interestingly, and this is something your readers should remember, The “System Restore” is not essential to Restoring from a Backup, although a strange unmentioned notice anywhere, the many icons on the Desktop, do not come completely or perfectly using the C: only for both Backup and Restore. So, I kep separately the Desktop data separately on aa a small USB memory that I update regularly. There is also a free software called “System Restore” and I keep its data which is few bytes on same USB memory stick. It allows the icons to be located on “”Geographically” same location, I has them, not just bundled to the left of the screen (Desktop)!

If the software does not care about what physical drive it uses then it should not have to specify it either. And most software does not care. The drive letter system is clunky and should be abstracted away IMO.

It’s a legacy thing, but I tend to agree. You can, if you like, use the mounting approach in Windows, it’s just not quite as transparent.

Is there a reason for that?. Just trying to understand!.

Mostly just for educational purposes, letting people know that there are two steps.

Thanks a lot, Leo!. You know, nowadays, I am very curious about everything that has to do with procedures and new knowledge in computing. I am trying to absorb as much as I can, for I know one day it would be worth the effort. That was the only reason for my question.

Is there any way, having once assigned a persistent letter to a drive, to unassign it and get Windows to go back to assigning a temporary (available) letter instead? How do I do this? Do I have to reformat the drive?

I’ve not found a definitive answer, but two theories: format the drive on a different machine, or use a 3rd party utility per this post: https://www.techspot.com/community/topics/usb-drive-or-flash-problems-how-to-cleanup-and-remove-old-usb-storage-drivers.145884/

I bought a new Asus Laptop with Windows 10 installed. Switched it on and before it had completed updating windows 10 I got a message to say that it could not finish the updates as there was not sufficient Disk space on the internal 30Gb HDD! I purchased a 2.5″ 250Gb Crucial HDD. which fitted into the spare drive bay. formatted it and using easus, Copied the C drive to D. I am now stuck as it will not let me swap the “c” and d”” drive letters. I suppose that could reformat the c drive, but this also contains two other partitions, EFI System Partition and Recovery partition. What do you suggest?

I have an old computer with one hard drive named C. I just purchased a new computer with a 256 GB SSD, which is designated as C and a 1TB hard drive designated as D. If I use the migration tool that came with the new computer it will transfer all the data to drive C, the 256 GB drive and also the boot drive. I want to transfer the data to the D drive, but my old computer has only one drive called C, so I am assuming that it is also my boot drive. If that be the case how could I transfer the data to my new machine? I originally thought I could change the drive and paths to D on the old computer and then migrate it to the D drive on the new computer. However, if this is s also my boot drive, your article says this is a no-no. Help!

{link removed}

I’m not sure if this will work, but Easeus Partition Master is a more powerful tool than Disk Management and might be able to do what you ask. It has a free trial version which is great for a one-off job.

Hello Leo and everyone here, my hard drive recently got corrupt and I was asked to format it, so I didn’t format it, I just did a command prompt and I got the drive repaired. But now it moved my drive letter name from E to F and it’s asking me to format the E drive. Can I format it? And if I format it will it affect the F drive? Please help. I don’t know if I should format it or I should change the drive letter back to E and see if it will work

My problem. Small, solid-state C: drive, 200 GB. Large spinning D: drive, 1 Terabyte. Wish I knew how to safely move bulky programs (like Mathematica) from my C: to my D: drive.

The best way is to find out if the program’s setup program has the option to set up to a custom location. IF it does, then uninstall it, and then reinstall it to the new drive/location.

I had a similar issue. I found a program called FolderMove 3.0 Free. It will allow you to do exactly what you asked. It is available from http://www.FolderMove.com – Before I used it for the first time, I made sure I had done a complete backup of my system.

I have a Windows 10 computer with 1 terabyte drive space. Windows has apparently partitioned my drives into a C drive with 119 GB and a D drive with 931 GB. My C drive is totally out of space. I’ve moved all of my picture and music to my D drive. I don’t even know why I need a D drive if I could increase the size of my C drive. I see that I can shrink my D drive using Disk Management, but it won’t allow me to increase the C drive. Is there a way to increase C? Thanks.

There’s an article for that: Can I Make My C: Partition Bigger by Taking Space from D:?

My Disk 0 is marked as the D drive. Disk 1 is the C drive. The Delete Volume is grayed out for the D drive. Do I have to delete all of the data before I can delete the volume? I tried to shrink the D drive, but after doing so, the C drive still shows the extend volume as grayed out. Any thoughts? Thanks.

If I understand you, C: and D: are on 2 different physical drives. You can’t shrink the D: drive to extend the C: drive because a volume can’t span 2 drives. The drive number such as disk 0 and disk 1 indicate physical drives. The letters represent the logical partitions on the drives. On an unpartitioned drive, the logical drive spans the entire physical drive.

In that article Leo linked to, he recommends EaseUS Partition Master for more complicated situations. I find Partition Master much easier for most partition management tasks, easier than Windows Disk Management. It combines all the steps into one set of clicks.

EaseUS Partition Master says their software won’t work since C and D are on different disks. Here’s a screenshot of my drives. I’m at a loss of what to do. D is on Disk 0 while C is on Disk 1 Disk 2 is my external backup drive. Is there no way to increase the size of my C drive, which is totally out of space?

If they are on 2 different physical disks, they can’t be combined into one. The best you can do is move as many files from C: to D: to make more room on C:.

I had some confusion with getting the drive letter assigned to external drives to stick. I have a set of external drives that I use for off-site backups, using one each month, then at the end of the month I rotate that month’s drive off site and bringing the next drive into use. I set up my backup software, Macrium Reflect, to back up to the G: drive, so I wanted each of these drives to use the letter G: There would never be more than one of these drives connected at the same time so I thought, erroneously, that I could use Disk Management to assign each to G: and that the assignment would stick. However, I learned that, this will not work and I need to assign the drive letter when each drive comes into rotation – or, at least, this is one way to accomplish what I want. This is because Windows remembers that the drive letter is in use and will not automatically use it again although it will let you manually assign it. For example, let’s say, I assign G: to drive #1, rotate it offsite, and then assign G: to drive #2. So far, so good. But when I quit using drive #2 and begin to use drive #1 again, Windows will not automatically use G: for drive #1 because it remembers that letter G is in use. So it will assign it the next available letter, in my case D:. This is simply solved by manually assigning letter G: to drive #1 again.

Three Easy Ways to Change USB Drive Letter in Windows 11, 10, 8 or 7

Top three ways about how to change USB drive letter are listed in this post. You can pick the one that you like.

By Bryce / Updated on May 12, 2023

The reasons for changing drive letter for USB device

You may want to change USB drive letter in Windows 11, 10, 8, or 7 under the following conditions:

☞ The USB device, like external hard drive is not recognized in Window Explorer out of drive letter conflict. To resolve the problem, you can reassign drive ☞ letter to the USB drive. ☞ T he USB drive letter keeps changing every time it was connected to your PC. You can assign a permanent drive letter to the USB drive . ☞ You just don’t like the drive letter that has been assigned automatically to the USB drive and want to change it .

How to: Change USB drive letter in Windows 11/10/8/7 easily

Next, there are three ways about how to change drive letter for USB flash drive, USB external hard drive, etc. will be displayed. Pick up one way as you like.

Method 1. Change USB drive letter via Disk Management

Method 2. change usb drive letter using cmd, method 3. change usb drive letter with a free 3rd party gui tool.

Disk Management is a Windows built-in tool, allowing you to manage disk and partitions conveniently. Follow the steps given below to change drive letter of USB drive in Disk Management.

Step 1. Press Windows + R in Windows 11/10/8/7, input “ d iskmgmt.msc ” and hit Enter key to open Disk Management.

Step 2. Right-click the USB partition that you want to change the drive letter and choose Change Drive Letter and Paths... .

Step 3. In the pop-up window, click Change… . If your USB drive is not showing up in drive out of drive letter missing, you can click Add to assign a drive letter to it.

Step 4. Choose a new drive letter from the list and click OK .

Note: If the USB drive is formatted with a file system incompatible with Windows OS, like Ext4 or is write-protected, you can find that “ Change Drive Letter and Paths ” option greyed out.

To resolve the problem, you can format your USB drive with a file system recognized by Windows 10 /11 or remove write protection at first. Or you can try Method 2 or Method 3 to change the drive letter for your USB drive.

You can also change drive letter for USB drive from Command Prompt through the following steps:

Step 1. Pres s Windows + R simultaneously, input cmd, and click OK .

Step 2 . Type diskpart and hit Enter .

Step 3. Run commands listed below in order.

▪ list volume ▪ select volume n ▪ assign letter= m ▪ exit ▪ exit

If you find out Change Drive Letter and Paths greyed out and are unfamiliar with Command Prompt, you can try a 3 rd party partition manager for Windows PC, AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard. It can change drive letter for USB drive even when it is write-protected or not formatted with NTFS or FAT file system. Now, free download it and take a closer look at how it works.

Step 1. Install and run the partition manager. In the home interface, right-click the partition whose drive letter needs to be changed and go to Advanced > Change Drive Letter .

Step 2. In the pop-up window, choose a new drive letter for your USB drive and click OK .

Step 3. You’ll go back to the main interface automatically. Click Apply and Proceed to commit the operation.

✍ Notes: ✌ You can get more functions, like quick partition, partition recovery, etc., if you upgrade to AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional . ✌ To more easily identify USB drive, like external hard drive, you can also choose to change name of USB drive.

How to rename external hard drive [four ways included].

Four valid & simple ways about how to rename external hard drive will be demonstrated in this post. Read it and you can choose one way to change its volume label.

How to Create UEFI Boot USB of Windows 10?

To create UEFI boot USB of Windows 10 or Windows 11 for installation, you can use CMD. If you want to make bootable USB with UEFI support for repair, you can use AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional instead.

How to Restore USB Drive to Original State in Windows 10/8/7?

Try to restore USB drive to original state as you want to restore it back to full capacity or delete all files on it? Refer to this article to get detailed steps to perform this operation.

Free Download to Try AOMEI Partition Assistant Now

Home » Tech Tips » Windows » How to Assign or Change Drive Letter in Windows 11?

How to Assign or Change Drive Letter in Windows 11?

Windows by default uses C drive (C:) for hosting system and application files. You can choose different drives like D: instead of C: while installing Windows on your computer. Similarly, it is also possible to manually change the installed app’s location , though generally users install apps on C: drive. Did you anytime think of changing the existing drive letters in your system? Here is how you can do that in Windows 11 PC.

Default Drive Name Assignments in Windows 11

Let us say, you have two partitions C: and D: volumes on your hard disk. Here is how the default drive letter assignment in Windows work:

A: – floppy disk drive for IBM computers (obsolete)
B: – floppy drive for MS-DOS and Windows computers (obsolete)
C: – Windows and app installation files
D: – storage space partition
E: – the letter after your storage partition for CD drive (if CD/DVD drive is available)
F: onwards – removable storage disks like USB and external hard disks

When you have more partitions on the hard drive, system will use the next drive letters like E: or F: when you insert an external drive. For example, when you have C: and D: drives on your hard disk and insert an USB drive , it will take the letter E: or later.

Changing Drive Letters in Windows 11

It is not necessary to live with the assigned drive letters forever on your system. You can either reduce / increase the drive’s space and assign new letters or simply change an existing drive’s letter. For example, you have 400GB D: drive which you can simply change to F: drive. Alternatively, you can divide it into 200GB + 200GB drives and name them as G: and H: drives.

Windows 11 makes it easy to change the drive letters from the Settings app without using registry or changing system files. However, you can also do the same from Computer Management as with the case in Windows 10 .

1. Change Drive Letter from Windows 11 Settings

If you want to change the assigned drive letters for any partition on your hard disk except C drive then this is the option you should proceed with.

Press “Win + I” keys or use Windows Search to find Windows Settings app.
Once you are in the Settings app, go to “System” tab and then click on “Storage” option.

Go down to the bottom of the “Storage” settings section and click on “Advanced storage settings” available under “Storage management” section.

This will expand the section and click on “Disks & volumes” option.

The “Disks and volumes” section will show all your existing drives and click on the one you want to change the letter name. it will show two buttons – “Explore” and “Properties” and click on the “Properties” button.

On the next screen, you can see the buttons for “Change label” and “Change drive letter”.

Click “Change drive letter” button and select your favorite letter from the dropdown to assign.

The dropdown will show all letters except C: and the current volume. In the above example, we want to change the D: drive and the system shows A to Z letters except C and D. Since D is the current volume, it is not shown in the list. But C is not shown because it is a system volume partition and you cannot change the drive letter for C. You will not see “Change drive letter” button when selecting properties of C drive. However, you can assign A and B for drive letters which were once reserved only for floppy disks. Since floppy disk is obsolete Windows allows you to assign those reserved drive letters A and B also.

2. Change Drive Letter from Disk Management in Windows 11

Though changing drive letter is easy with Windows Settings, it does not allow changing C drive letter. You can use Disk Management app for changing any drive letter with additional features.

Press “Win + R” keys to Run prompt .
Type compmgmt.msc and press “OK” button.

This will open Computer Management app and select “Disk Management” from the sidebar available under “Storage” section.
You will see all the drives available on your computer and select C or D or any drive that you want to assign a new letter.
Go to “Action > All Tasks > Change Drive Letter and Paths…” menu.

On the pop-up that appears, click on “Change…” button.

Click on the dropdown against “Assign the following drive letter:” option.
Select your favorite letter and click “OK” button.

Here you will see all the drive letters except D which is already assigned to another partition volume on the hard disk. Though it is possible to change drive letter for C, we do not recommend as it can affect the installed programs on your computer. Most programs by default install under “Program Files” section in C drive. Changing the drive letter may affect the installed programs and they may stop working. In such a case, you need to uninstall and reinstall the program on the new drive again. This will be a big task if multiple programs stopped working. Therefore, choose the system drive when you clean install Windows first time and stick with that. If you are using preinstalled Windows on C drive, then continue to use that without changing. You can change all other drives using Disk Management or Windows Settings app.

If you want to create parition, select the volume and right click on it. From the menu, select “Shrink Volume” option and select the reduced size for your volume. The remaining size will become unallocated for which you can assign a new label and letter as explained above. Learn more about how to create disk paritions in Windows computer .

Assigning Drive Letter to Removable Disks

As mentioned, Windows will assign the available drive letter for removable disks after the current partition volumes. The problem is when you have multiple removable disks, the assigned letters will change every time which may confuse you. The good part is that you can assign a drive letter as explained above for your removable USB or external hard disk. Windows will remember the assigned letter and use the same whenever you insert the external drive. However, make sure to use the letters clearly away from the current and CD/DVD drives. For example, you can use X or Y or even A or B which are generally not assigned.

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How to Remove and Assign Drive Letters in Windows with Diskpart

Diskpart is one of the most powerful Windows command line utilities which first appeared in Windows XP. Diskpart is mainly used by Windows administrators to manage tasks like partition management, formatting, creating, re-sizing and getting a detailed information regarding the hard disk or other removable disks attached to the computer. Even though you have a built-in GUI application called Disk Management utility in Windows, Diskpart is much more flexible and works well in a server environment where you need to set up some advanced features like RAID.

Note: This post isn’t intended for beginners, and doing something wrong while using Diskpart utility may cause drive failures and data losses, so make sure that you have a good backup before continuing. You have been warned.

Assign Drive Letter Using Diskpart

Assigning a new drive letter to a partition or removable device using Diskpart is really easy. First, search for the command prompt in the Start menu, right click on it and select the option “Run as administrator.” If you are using Windows 8, press “Win + X” to open the power user menu and select the option “Command Prompt (Admin).”

The above action will open the command prompt window with administrative rights. Here enter the following command to start the Diskpart utility.

The next step is to list all the volumes in your computer so that you can clearly see all the volume numbers and drive letters of your hard disk partitions and any other removable devices. Use the command below to list all the volumes.

Once the Diskpart utility lists all the volumes, take a note of the volume number of the drive you want to assign a new drive letter. In my case, I’m trying to assign a new drive letter to the drive I:\ , so my volume number is 7 . Now execute the following command to select the volume while replacing the # symbol with an actual volume number.

Once the volume is selected, use the following command to assign a new drive letter. Don’t forget to replace the letter “V” with the drive letter you want to assign.

That’s all there is to do; you have successfully changed or re-assigned a new drive letter to a partition or a removable drive in Windows. In fact, if you open the Windows explorer, you can see that the change is reflected immediately.

Remove Drive Letter using Diskpart

Before moving any further, removing or un-assigning drive letter will effectively hide the drive or partition from plain sight, i.e. you cannot see that drive in the Windows explorer. To remove a drive letter, follow the above steps 1 through 4 and then use the below command to remove the drive letter of a drive or partition. Don’t forget to replace the letter “I” with the actual drive letter.

As soon as you have done that, Diskpart will remove the drive letter for that volume. If you list the volumes again, you will see that the drive you just interacted with will have no drive letter next to it.

Moreover, if you navigate to the Windows explorer, you will see that the drive which got un-assigned isn’t listed anymore. But again, always be careful while you are messing around with Diskpart utility; it may cause irrecoverable data loss if used incorrectly.

Hopefully that helps, and do comment below if you face any problems while following the steps or to simply share your thoughts.

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Vamsi is a tech and WordPress geek who enjoys writing how-to guides and messing with his computer and software in general. When not writing for MTE, he writes for he shares tips, tricks, and lifehacks on his own blog Stugon.

Featured Image depicting the latest Windows10 and 11 Update Problems

Windows Tip: Assign Permanent Letters to Removable Drives

Each time you plug in a USB drive or SD card in a PC, Windows gives it a dynamic alphabetic letter. Here’s how to give your drive(s) a permanent letter.

Windows will assign drive letters to external flash drives, SD cards, and other removable storage devices dynamically as you plug them in. If you use many different external storage devices throughout the day, having different letters assigned each time can become annoying and make things feel unorganized. Here’s how to assign permanent letters to each device to make things easier.

Add Permanent Drive Letters to Removeable Storage

Windows progresses through the alphabet (sans A and B) to assign drive letters to devices as you plug them in. So if you plug in a USB flash drive to get data from it, it might be F: but the next time you plug it in, it might be E: or G: depending on the order you plug them in.

The neat thing is you can assign a permanent letter to a USB drive directly with Windows 7, 8.1, and Windows 10. It’s an easy process, and there’s no need to install any third-party utility.

Assign a Specific Drive Letter in Windows

1. To set this up, plug in the drive that you want to assign a permanent letter. Then open the Run dialog ( Windows Key+R ) and type: compmgmt.msc and hit Enter or click OK.

Or, right-click the Start button to bring up the hidden quick access menu in Windows 10 or 8.1 and select Computer Management .

2 quick access Windows 10 Computer Management

2. Once that’s open, choose Disk Management in the left pane under Storage. It will take a few seconds while Windows looks for the drives currently connected to your PC and displays them in the right pane.

3. Right-click the drive you want to assign a permanent letter to and then choose Change Drive Letter and Paths from the menu.

4. A dialog box will open up, and here you need to click the Change button. Then make sure that Assign the following drive letter is selected and choose the letter you want to give it. Click OK and close out of Computer Management.

Now, each time you plug that drive into your PC, it will register with the drive letter you gave it.

39 Comments

March 31, 2016 at 7:33 am

This IS NOT permanent. Windows will still change them randomly. Again I repeat THIS IS NOT PERMANENT

April 27, 2016 at 4:41 am

this tutorial is rubbish. i have done this many times, windows still changes the drive letter. this is not permament at all!!!

May 14, 2016 at 5:20 am

Same experience as the other two users. I had changed my drive letter for a USB drive through disk management and it was working great for quite some time when suddenly today the drive letter was changed.

What I did notice is I had my e-reader connected before I turned on the USB drive (which had the letter assigned). Suddenly my e-reader has the assigned letter from the USB drive.

So… NOT PERMANENT AT ALL unless you turn on your drive with the “permanent letter” first.

Kumar Abhirup

May 31, 2016 at 4:52 am

Thanx, this helped me a lot.

August 30, 2022 at 10:27 am

For a while …

September 13, 2016 at 6:21 am

Nope. Windows 10 changes it if I plug in a different usb drive first.

October 8, 2016 at 12:29 am

This doesn’t work at all. You can change the drive letter from there, but if you unplug your unit and plug another one, windows will assign the previous letter to the new unit nonetheless. This is so annoying.

Pablo Guerrero

December 10, 2016 at 10:08 am

I usually have to use the Disk Management utility to correct the mess that Windows makes with drive letters. The most annoying thing is that Windows even changes the drive letters of those external disks that haven’t been unplugged.

Plugged to my laptop I always have an external diskdrive that always should be E: But if I have a SD card inserted in the SD drive and boot up the computer then the SD card is assigned E: and the always plugged (never unplugged) diskdrive is re-assigned as G: which is annoying since I have an application that looks for its overlays and databases on drive E:

Is there a way to say Windows that a used drive letter (like E:) is not available for dynamic drive letter assignment?

February 21, 2017 at 4:13 pm

Try assigning a letter well away from ABCDEF, like Z. This way windows won’t automatically reassign your letter when more drives are connected.

Steve Krause

February 22, 2017 at 10:38 am

Exactly what I do Will. Great tip.

Brian Burgess

May 2, 2017 at 8:00 pm

This is a great point, Will. I’ll upgrade the article to include your tip. Thanks!

July 8, 2017 at 12:47 am

It worked for a while. Then letters were changed after some days… again! :-(

April 29, 2024 at 7:39 am

That doesn’t work either.

MyTechMaster

March 1, 2017 at 4:47 pm

What Will says is true. If you assign the last letters of the alphabet to your external drives Windows will ALWAYS REMEMBER AND NEVER OVERWRITE THEM. Just don’t assign two of your external drives the same drive letter and this will work 100% of the time for you. Peace!

September 14, 2021 at 3:18 pm

((( NYM ))) after 30 years, still solving the world’s problems! another perfect answer. worked grrrrrreat! thank you my dear! see you in one of your forums helping folks soon! thank you thank you❗❗❗❗ zack

Sandy Lemberg

September 14, 2021 at 6:39 pm

Unless you have more than 26 external drives.

March 19, 2017 at 8:12 am

It is too late to assign a drive letter near the end of the alphabet. I have done a lot of work that uses drive letter E: I would have to redo all of this to change it to Z:

Surely, Microsoft would have a tool to assign drives permanently.

May 10, 2017 at 6:51 am

John, change your other drives to z,y,x, etc. then when the PC boots or you insert another drive/flash, it will be at the end and not take your E: drives spot.

April 1, 2017 at 9:23 am

With all the cracks in Windows I don’t see why there isn’t another “standard” OS that’s just as easy (or easier) and plug-n-play, that actually uses “memory” to remember stuff like drive letters. Or window size and placement. Or “Yes I’m sure” and “Yes I did click on ‘yes i’m sure'” and “No, I’m not a Robot…you are” and not to ask me to not ever show something again, every time…etc.

June 25, 2017 at 4:43 am

There is a shareware application which addresses this, though it’s intended for computer engineers and system administrators, not regular users. You can configure it to map drive letters according to DeviceIDs and other really permanent data. It runs as a service, to it autostarts with Windows. However, there’s no graphical interface. Everything has to be coded on an INI file, which is highly technical.

The software is called USBDLM is it’s free for private and educational uses. It’s available at Softpedia and other software archives.

July 7, 2017 at 8:25 am

The first 2 replies here are annoying. This works 100% unless you have gone and relettered multiple devices to the same letter. In that event only 1 (one) of the devices will acquire the desired letter and always the first. When the second device is plugged in Windows sees that the desired letter is use and uses the next available letter. You cannot give 2 devices the same letter, ever. Get over it.

Sheesh. I despise idiots.

If you’re using flash drives, think about reassigning them to A or B; these letters are still available and never used because no one has a floppy drive anymore. This way they can never get in the way of a letter you desire for an external drive.

For the idiot who programmed access to a database on an external drive, something that should never be done precisely because of drive letter changes, you either need to make sure the external drive is always assigned that letter or mount the drive into an empty NTFS folder to eliminate drive letter access. The only other thing you can do is manually assign a letter to the SD drive so it doesn’t take your precious E.

Computers should be more like cars and require an operator’s license, there’d be so many less morons trying to use a computer.

July 8, 2017 at 12:53 am

Some people at this forum really need a sex life, learning some manners, or probably both.

Noway Nohow

November 30, 2017 at 7:23 am

Hey Annoyed, your communication skills are annoying. Your tack is repugnant unless that is who you are as you go through life. Also, having a mobile drive that is being plugged into different employee’s computers does not make it practical to assign it under the user’s NTFS folder – especially if ACL’s are used for data security. One never sounds professional when they’re yelling/insulting.

July 7, 2020 at 10:33 am

This is why they invented File Servers, and NAS. Anyone you allow on your network can access, permissions always the same. Mobile hard drives are subject to Shaking, Shocking, Possibly dropping, and possibly locking.

Tact* and once upon a time it was understood that highly technical people have put most of their education and self-education into making their computer work instead of making people feel good about the way that we talk.

Annoyed set his name to Annoyed for good reason. It’s blatantly obvious to anyone willing to peruse that 6 out of the first 7 commentators DID NOT READ THE ARTICLE, in which the author specifically explains that drives like E:\ and F:\ will get rewritten as part of windows norm so you should “Permanently” set on letters far away from those so they don’t get reset:: ” When assigning your drive letter, make sure to choose a letter toward the end of the alphabet list. For example, X, Y, or Z — otherwise Windows has the tendency to eventually assign a different letter. Also, keep in mind that it will only be the assigned letter on the computer you changed it on. If you take your external drive to a different PC, Windows will give it a different dynamic letter. ” – The article you should have just read.

Being annoyed about people using computers badly is valid. Some of us work really hard to be professional and do things by best-practice so that solutions work long-term and no one has to guess at the state.

Then you read an article like this where most of the comments did not even bother to read the main text before complaining, and everyone else is doing backwoods duck-tape solutions.

ALSO WTF happened to the internet where now we’re all supposed to sound professional?

September 11, 2021 at 6:35 am

Finally I too fought this for years on many machines that I work on and finally I decided I would try this::::::: I decided I would go into safe mode and as administrator allocate a certain letter Z or x or y for these external SSD drives that I have to work with and then I rebooted and it never ever ever ever came back .

that was the solution I did a couple years ago and I’ve done it to all the machines I work on since and it’s perfect. Forever gone.

July 18, 2017 at 6:38 am

Thanks so much for the clear instructions.

August 3, 2017 at 6:58 am

This seems to work for me. I’ve assigned permanent letters a while ago and so far they’re not changing. I did assign only one of the four drives a letter towards the end of the alphabet, but the others are from A to E. Also, I gave each of the drives unique names.

August 21, 2017 at 4:22 am

I have three computers and three USB HDs. On each computer I have assigned these drives (for historical reasons) the letters G:, M: and O: respectively. D: is a partition on the internal HD and E: is the optical disc burner, so if I plug in any other USB device it usually comes up as F:. I find that these drive assignments stick . . . most of the time! Very occasionally one of the USB HDs comes up as F:. There appears to be no rhyme nor reason; but, hey!, it’s Windows, isn’t it, so that’s no real surprise. I just have to go into Disk Management to change it back and it usually behaves itself well for the next few weeks or months. Nothing, really, to get hot under the collar about.

September 14, 2021 at 2:11 am

That is exactly my experience, except I also have P and Q drives. I assigned these letters at a time when I had a multiple card reader occupying drive letters H to L. Goodness knows why the G drive occasionally gets reassigned as F, but it happens so infrequently that it’s no real inconvenience.

November 22, 2017 at 12:04 pm

Change drive letter is grayed out on my system. I am an administrator on the PC

Edward Bear

November 22, 2017 at 4:30 pm

You can use the command line program diskpart to change the driver letter: 1. open command prompt 2. type “diskpart” (in these instructions do not type the quotation marks), press Enter 3. type “list volumes” , press Enter 4. identify the volume number associated with the drive whose letter you wish to change – assume this is volume “N” 5. type “select volume N” (replacing N with appropriate volume number) then press Enter 6. type “assign letter=L” (replacing L with the appropriate new drive letter) then press Enter 7. type “exit” then press Enter to close diskpart and return to command prompt.

August 30, 2018 at 2:33 am

This works fine for me, even if changing Drive Letter is greyed out by our IT

January 7, 2018 at 4:20 am

You never said what to do if its when you try to change it its grayed out. I cant give it a letter. What do I do?

March 24, 2018 at 8:56 pm

Jay, when a drive letter is grayed out, it has already been assigned to another drive. Find out which drive has the letter you want to use and then change it’s letter to Z. This will free up the old drive letter and it will no longer be grayed out.

March 24, 2018 at 8:42 pm

This annoying problem could easily be avoided if the whole concept of drive letters was abandoned. Each drive should have a distinctive drive name (or number) assigned by the user. Drives should then optionally be listed alphabetically or numerically by Windows. I don’t know who started this drive A:\, B:\, C:\, etc. concept but in today’s computing world, it’s obsolete and unnecessary. As it stands now, you can choose to not assign a drive letter during formatting but if you do that, they will not list when you click “This Computer”. It makes you wonder what they are smoking.

March 30, 2019 at 5:39 am

Would really like to know how to assign a drive letter PER DEVICE, please

example. (this) thumb is always K (this thumb drive) is always L.

not the drive slot itself, but device.

January 27, 2021 at 6:05 pm

For years I’ve been using A: for my built-in SD Card reader, and E: through K: for specific external hard drives and specific thumb drives. I went through computer management to set all that up and it worked for years. For reasons that I cannot work out, my SD Card reader is automatically assigned E: whenever I put in any SD card, including the exact same SD card and/or reboot my computer. Even when I change the drive letter on the SD Card reader back to A: and reboot my computer, the drive letter is once again reset to E: by the computer even when there are no other drives of any kind attached to the computer before or after attempting to assign the SD Card reader to A:. I’ve since tried updating all the drivers, a couple of which have updated, and the problem persists. While I have upgraded one of my external drives recently, I cannot see how that would cause the problem especially since it is not the first time that I’ve replaced an external drive and assigned the new drive to the drive letter of the drive it replaced. I am not running any new software, so as far as I can tell it isn’t a software conflict. My system is set up such that the drive letters I have been assigning need to remain what I assigned them. (I’ve already assigned my DVD-ROM drive to Z:, and even that isn’t working properly now.) Once up a time using Computer Management might have “permanently” reassigned the drive letters, since 1/25/2020 that is apparently no longer the case. I need to find another solution that works.

Being old school and having started out on DOS computers with 5.25″ floppy drives, the lettering of the drives is not a problem to me in and of itself, and it makes no particular difference to me if the lettering of drives is ultimately done away with, but until that time we must work with the tools we have. So any help would be appreciated in resolving this.

June 13, 2023 at 8:40 am

At this moment I have the same problem with two USB drives installed in my router. Suddenly the original assigned letters changed and that played havoc in my desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones.

I agree with protesters. The letter assigning system is obsolete and it seems to me that nobody cares. Ok, let’s accept that A,B,C,D is used by the OS, but why not also use proper names for removable devices, let say movies, music1, music2, personal-letters or whatever. Of course if you assign the same name to two different USB drives that’s your problem.

June 21, 2023 at 1:54 pm

I do not have this problem.

1. Use high up letters — not D, E, etc, but P, Q, etc.

2. If you get an unwanted change, use Disk Management to change back

3 Use Windows 7. Who knows what Windows 10 or 11 will try to do to your system.

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How to Change a Drive Letter

Don't like the letters assigned to your drives in Windows? Change them!

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What to Know

Open Disk Management. Locate the drive you want to change. Right-click and choose Change Drive Letter and Paths > Change .
Select the drive letter you want to assign from Assign the following drive letter . Then select OK and choose Yes .

The letters assigned to your hard drives, optical drives, and USB drives in Windows are not fixed. Use the Disk Management tool in Windows to change drive letters. These steps apply to Windows XP and newer versions of Windows .

How to Change Drive Letters in Windows

Follow these steps to change the driver letters in any version of Windows.

You can't change the drive letter of the partition that Windows is installed onto. On most computers, this is usually the C drive.

Open Disk Management , the tool in Windows that lets you manage drive letters, among [many] other things.

In Windows 11/10/8, Disk Management is also available from the Power User Menu ( WIN + X keyboard shortcut) and is probably the quickest way to open it. You can also start Disk Management from the Command Prompt in any version of Windows, but starting it via Computer Management is probably best for most of you.

Locate from the list at the top, or from the map at the bottom, the drive you want to change the drive letter of.

If you're not sure that the drive you're looking at is really the one you want to change the drive letter for, you can right-click or tap-and-hold the drive and then choose Explore . If you need to, look through the folders to see if that's the right drive.

Right-click or tap-and-hold the drive and choose Change Drive Letter and Paths .

Select Change .

If you've selected the primary drive by accident, some versions of Windows will display a message that reads Windows cannot modify the drive letter of your system volume or boot volume.

Choose the drive letter you want Windows to assign to this storage device by selecting it from the Assign the following drive letter drop-down box.

You don't need to worry if the drive letter is already being used by another drive because Windows hides any letters you can't use.

Select OK .

Choose Yes to the Some programs that rely on drive letters might not run correctly. Do you want to continue? question.

If you have software installed to this drive, it might stop working properly after changing the drive letter. See details on this in the section below.

Once the drive letter change is complete, which usually only takes a second or two, you're welcome to close any open Disk Management or other windows.

The drive letter is different from the volume label. You can change the volume label using similar steps .

If You Have Programs Not on the Main Drive

Changing drive letter assignments for drives that have software installed to them may cause the software to stop working. This isn't quite as common with newer programs and apps but if you have an old program, especially if you're still using Windows XP or Windows Vista, this is likely to be a problem.

Fortunately, most of us don't have software installed to drives other than the primary drive (typically the C drive), but if you do, consider this your warning that you might need to reinstall the software after changing the drive letter.

No Changes for the Operating System Drive

You cannot change the drive letter of the drive that the Windows operating system is installed on. If you'd like Windows to exist on a drive other than C , or whatever it happens to be now, you can make that happen but you'll have to complete a clean install of Windows to do it. Unless you have a pressing need to have Windows exist on a different drive letter, we don't recommend going through all that trouble.

Change, Don't Switch

There's no built-in way to switch drive letters between two drives in Windows. Instead, use a drive letter that you don't plan on using as a temporary "holding" letter during the drive letter change process.

For example, let's say you'd like to swap Drive A for Drive B . Start by changing Drive A's letter to one that you don't plan on using (like X ), then Drive B's letter to Drive A's original one, and finally Drive A's letter to Drive B's original one.

Using the Command Prompt

You can also change the drive letter from Command Prompt . It's not as easy as using Disk Management and you can't see right away which letters are available to choose, but it is completely doable with the diskpart command.

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Steps to change a drive letter in windows.

Windows will automatically assign a drive letter. Drive letters can be changed using Disk Management.

Windows 11 and 10

Right-click the Start button.

Disk Management will display a warning Some programs that rely on drive letters might not run correctly. Check other programs and change the drive letter to the new one. View the Use of Third-Party Software or Websites disclaimer. Western Digital Support cannot help with third-party software or hardware.

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Answer ID	1275
Published	08/20/2018 12:10 AM
Updated	07/18/2024 08:52 PM

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3 Ways to Change Drive Letter in Windows 10

3 Ways to Change Drive Letter in Windows 10: When you re-install Windows or have started your PC for the first time, you will notice that all your drives or volumes are by default assigned drive letter by Windows 10, well in future you might want to change these letter and in this post we will cover how to do that. Even when you connect an external drive such as hard disk, or a simple USB, you will notice that Windows 10 will automatically assign a drive letter to these connected drives.

How to Change Drive Letter in Windows 10

The process of Windows is quite simple, it progresses through the alphabet from A to Z to assign the available drive letters to devices as connected. But there are some letters which are exceptions such as A & B are reserved for floppy drives, whereas the drive letter C can only be used for the drive which has Windows installed on it. Anyway, without wasting any time let’s see How to Change Drive Letter in Windows 10 with the help of the below-listed tutorial.

Table of Contents

Make sure to create a restore point just in case something goes wrong.

Method 1: How to Change Drive Letter in Windows 10 using Disk Management

1.Press Windows Key + R then type diskmgmt.msc and hit Enter to open Disk Management.

2.Now right-click on the drive for which you want to change the drive letter for and then select “ Change Drive letters and Paths ” from the context menu.

3.On the next screen, select the currently assigned drive letter then click on the “ Change ” button.

Select the CD or DVD drive and click on Change

4.Make sure to select or check “ Assign the following drive letter ” then select any available drive letter you want to assign for your drive and click OK.

Now change the Drive letter to any other letter from the drop-down

5.Click Yes to confirm your actions.

6.Once finished, you can close Disk Management.

Method 2: How to Change Drive Letter in Command Prompt

1.Press Windows Key + X then select Command Prompt (Admin).

2.Type the following command into cmd and hit Enter after each one:

diskpart list volume (Note down the number of the volume for which you want to change the drive letter for) select volume # (Replace the # with the number which you noted above)

Type diskpart and list volume in cmd window

assign letter=new_drive_letter (Replace new_Drive_letter with actual drive letter which you want to use for example assign letter=G)

Type the following command to assign a drive letter assign letter=G

Note: If you selected an already assigned drive letter or the drive letter is not available then you will receive the error message indicating the same, again use a different drive letter to successfully assign a new drive letter for your drive.

3.Once finished, you can close the command prompt.

Method 3: How to Change Drive Letter in Windows 10 using Registry Editor

1.Press Windows Key + R then type regedit and hit Enter to open Registry Editor.

2.Navigate to the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

Navigate to MountedDevices then right-click on the drive and select rename

3.Make sure to select MountedDevices then in right window pane right-click on the binary (REG_BINARY) value (ex: “\DosDevices\F:”) for the drive letter (ex: “F”) of the drive you want to change the drive letter for and select Rename.

4.Now rename only the drive letter part of the above Binary value with an available drive letter for example. “ \DosDevices\G: ” and hit Enter.

How to Change Drive Letter in Registry Editor

5.Close Registry Editor and reboot your PC.

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That’s it you have successfully learned How to Change Drive Letter in Windows 10 but if you still have any questions regarding this tutorial then feel free to ask them in the comment’s section.

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COMMENTS

How to Change a Drive Letter on Windows 10 or Windows 11
Changing a drive letter is pretty simple. Click the Start button, type "Disk Management" in the search bar, and then hit Enter. The program name displayed in the search will not be Disk Management. It will be "Create and format hard disk partitions." You could also hit Windows+X or right-click the Start button, and then click "Disk Management."
Change and Assign Drive Letter in Windows 10
1 Open an elevated command prompt. 2 Type diskpart into the elevated command prompt, and press Enter. (see screenshot below) 3 Type list volume into the elevated command prompt, and press Enter. 4 Make note of the volume number (ex: 5) for the drive letter (ex: "F") of the drive (volume) you want to change.
How to assign permanent letters to drives on Windows 10
Search for Create and format hard disk partitions and click the top result to open the Disk Management experience. Right-click the drive and select the Change Drive Letter and Paths option. Click ...
Change a drive letter
The following steps show how to change the drive letter. Open Disk Management with administrator permissions. In Disk Management, select and hold (or right-click) the volume on which you want to change or add a drive letter, and then select Change Drive Letter and Paths. Tip. If you don't see the Change Drive Letter and Paths option or it's ...
How to Change Drive Letter in Windows 11: A Step-by-Step Guide
Step 3: Right-click the Drive. Right-click on the drive and select "Change Drive Letter and Paths.". A context menu will pop up when you right-click. This menu lets you access different settings for the drive, including changing its letter.
How to Assign / Change Drive Letter in Windows 10
Right-click the drive that you want to change or free the letter from and click "Change Drive Letter and Paths…". Click the "Change…" button. If you want to free up the letter you can ...
How to Use the Diskpart Utility to Assign and Remove Drive Letters
select volume 3. You should see a message that the volume is now selected. At this point you can easily assign a new drive letter. Just type in this command, substituting R for the drive letter you'd like to use: assign letter=R. Make sure to hit enter once you're done, of course. Once you've made that change, your drive should show up again as ...
How to change drive letter on Windows 11
Open Start. Search for Create and format disk partitions and click the top result to open the Disk Management tool. Right-click the volume and select the "Change Drive Letter and Paths" option. Click the Change button. Select the "Assign the following drive letter" option. Choose a different letter for the drive.
How to Change a Drive Letter on Windows 11 & 10
In the Disks & volumes section, scroll down and click the drive you want to change. Next, click the Properties button. Under the Volume Data section, click the Change drive letter button. When the ...
How to change drive letter using Settings on Windows 10
To change the drive letter with Manage Disks and Volumes in the Settings app, use these steps: Open Settings on Windows 10. Click on System. Click on Storage. Under the "More storage settings" section, click the Manage Disks and Volumes option. Select the drive with the partition you want to change the letter.
How to assign a drive letter in Windows 10
Right-click on the Start button. Click Disk Management to open the Disk Management console. Right-click the volume that has the drive letter you want to change. Click Change Drive Letter And Paths ...
How to Reassign Drive Letters in Windows
Reassign drive letters. Right-click on Start. Click on Disk Manager. Right-click on the drive you want to change. Click on Change Drive Letter and Paths…. Click on Remove and Add to remove the existing drive letter assignment and add a new one.
Manually assigning a drive letter using CMD/Diskpart
Procedure. Open up a command prompt (CMD/PowerShell). Type "diskpart" to start up diskpart. You will see the prompt change to "DISKPART>". Type "list vol" to list all available volumes. You can identify the drive by size and file system. Additionally, the volume doesn't currently have a drive letter. Select the volume using "sel vol <number>".
Three Easy Ways to Change USB Drive Letter in Windows 11, 10, 8 or 7
Step 1. Install and run the partition manager. In the home interface, right-click the partition whose drive letter needs to be changed and go to Advanced > Change Drive Letter. Step 2. In the pop-up window, choose a new drive letter for your USB drive and click OK. Step 3.
6 Ways to Change the Drive Letter in Windows
Press Win + I to open the Settings app, then select the "System" tab. Scroll down and click on "Storage.". Scroll down on the right side and click on "Advanced storage settings.". Under Advanced storage settings, click on "Disks & Volumes.". Select the drive whose letter you want to change, then click on the "Properties ...
How to Assign or Change Drive Letter in Windows 11?
Go to "Action > All Tasks > Change Drive Letter and Paths…" menu. Change Drive Letter in Disk Management. On the pop-up that appears, click on "Change…" button. Select Change Button. Click on the dropdown against "Assign the following drive letter:" option. Select your favorite letter and click "OK" button.
How to Remove and Assign Drive Letters in Windows with Diskpart
Assign Drive Letter Using Diskpart. Assigning a new drive letter to a partition or removable device using Diskpart is really easy. First, search for the command prompt in the Start menu, right click on it and select the option "Run as administrator.". If you are using Windows 8, press "Win + X" to open the power user menu and select the ...
Windows Tip: Assign Permanent Letters to Removable Drives
Assign a Specific Drive Letter in Windows. 1. To set this up, plug in the drive that you want to assign a permanent letter. Then open the Run dialog ( Windows Key+R) and type: compmgmt.msc and hit ...
How to Change a Drive Letter
What to Know. Open Disk Management. Locate the drive you want to change. Right-click and choose Change Drive Letter and Paths > Change. Select the drive letter you want to assign from Assign the following drive letter. Then select OK and choose Yes. The letters assigned to your hard drives, optical drives, and USB drives in Windows are not fixed.
Steps to Change a Drive Letter in Windows
Windows will automatically assign a drive letter. Drive letters can be changed using Disk Management. Windows 11 and 10 Right-click the Start button. Click Disk Management. Right-click a drive to change the drive letter. Select Change Drive Letter and Paths... Click Change. Select a new drive letter. Click Yes. IMPORTANT:
3 Ways to Change Drive Letter in Windows 10
3.On the next screen, select the currently assigned drive letter then click on the " Change " button. 4.Make sure to select or check " Assign the following drive letter " then select any available drive letter you want to assign for your drive and click OK. 5.Click Yes to confirm your actions. 6.Once finished, you can close Disk Management.
Can't assign a letter for drive in Windows Disk Manager
In reply to harrify's post on February 18, 2021. (1) If you will drag the bottom pane up, Disk 0 should show up. Also, double-click the divider lines in the Header of the top pane so that we can see the full columns. Drag the right border rightward, if necessary.
How to change CD Drive's letter?
1.-Ensure that the drive you're relettering isn't in use and that no files from that drive are open. 2.-Right-click on the Start button. 3.-Click Disk Management to open the Disk Management console. 4.-Right-click the volume that has the drive letter you want to change. 5.-Click Change Drive Letter And Paths.