assign drive letter windows 98

How to change a drive letter

In Microsoft Windows, different storage media , devices, and partitions on your computer are identified using drive letters . By default, these letters are assigned automatically. However, if you desire to change a default drive letter, may do so by following the steps below.

If you're trying to switch between drives, see: How to change drives in MS-DOS and Windows command line.

Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10, and 11

• CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, and other devices.
• Open the Disk Management utility .
• Right-click the volume whose drive letter you want to change and select the Change Drive Letter and Paths option.

• In the window that appears, click the Change button.

• In the next window, select the letter you desire from the drop-down menu on the right, then click OK .

CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, and other devices

In the newer versions of Windows, devices that are not considered to be volumes (i.e., CD-ROM and DVD-ROM drives) aren't listed on the same page as hard drives , SSDs , and partitions . However, you can adjust which section you are viewing, allowing you to assign a different drive letter to these devices.

The letter you assign to these devices must come after that of the hard drive. For example, because your hard drive is C:, you may only use D: through Z:. If you have multiple hard drives or partitions and your last drive letter is F:, you can only change your device's drive letter to G: through Z:.

• Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10, and 11.
• Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows ME.
• MS-DOS and Windows 3.X.
• At the top of Disk Management window, click the View menu.
• In the drop-down menu that appears, select Top , then select Disk List .

• Right-click the disk drive whose drive letter you want to change and select the Change Drive Letter and Paths option.

Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows ME

• Open the Device Manager .
• Click the plus sign (+) next to CD-ROM or DVD/CD-ROM drives .
• Double-click the disk drive whose drive letter you want to change.
• Click the Settings tab.
• Where the computer lists the Start and end drive letter , make your selection and then click OK .
• Restart the computer.
• How to restart Microsoft Windows.

MS-DOS and Windows 3.X

• If you are in Windows, Exit to an MS-DOS prompt .
• Type cd\ and press Enter .
• Once at DOS type edit c:\autoexec.bat
• In the autoexec.bat window, locate the MSCDEX line .
• On the MSCDEX line, if it's missing /L:x (where x is the drive letter), add /L:D (assigning the CD-ROM to D: and can be anything up to Z:).
• Once changes are made, click File (if you do not have a mouse, press Alt + F ), then choose Exit and say Yes to save the changes .
• Once back at DOS, type edit c:\config.sys
• In the config.sys window, look for anything that says "LASTDRIVE=x" (were x is the last drive letter). If the line is missing, add LASTDRIVE=K (or the letter you want as the ending letter) at the top of the config.sys file.

The LASTDRIVE must be a letter between C and Z.

• Once changes are made, click File (if you do not have a mouse , press Alt + F ), then choose Exit and say Yes to save the changes .

Related information

• How to rename or label a disk drive.
• How to set up a hard drive and partition in Windows.
• How to merge partitions in Windows.
• How to delete a partition in Windows.
• See the hard drive and Windows definitions for related information and links.

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How to change drive letter in Win98?

• Thread starter iluvdeal
• Start date Jan 19, 2002
• Operating Systems

Golden Member

• Jan 19, 2002

I have dual boot up system (98 and XP). I partitioned my hard drive like this: C: FAT32 D: NTFS E: NTFS F: FAT32 G: FAT32 H: FAT32 Basically the problem is both OS's will share a program on the G: drive, XP sees it as the G: since it can access NTFS and FAT32 volumes however 98 sees it as E: since it can't see the NTFS volumes. The program has setting mapped explicityly to the G: directory so I need that partition to be the same letter as it is in XP. So how do I change the drive letter of individual partitions in Win98? Nothing in the Control Panel allows this, you only can change drive letters for cdroms, etc. Can a third party program do this which only affects how 98 sees it and not XP? Thanks!  

Hmm, as far as I know this isn't possible. 98 assigns drive letters in a set fashion (for HDs), and the only way I know of to change that is by physically moving them. Perhaps you should change your setup so that all the FAT partitions are first in the chain and will have the same drive letter on both. Sorry I'm not more help, thats the only way I know to do it. Mabye somebody else knows a program that can do it.... j  

Senior member

All 9X OS's sets drive letters by Primary/Logical partition structure: All Pri. partitions go first then the logical one if you have 2 HDD with, for example, 1 Pri. and 2 Logical partitions on each Win9X would set Letters as follows: [HDD1-Pri.(s)] -> [HDD2-Pri.(s)] -> [HDD1-logical(s)] -> [HDD2-Logical(s)] There is NO way to change that.  

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• Windows Technical Mojo

Assigning drive letters to partitions in 98

• Thread starter Citrus538
• Start date May 13, 2001

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Ars legatus legionis.

• May 13, 2001
• Add bookmark

Ars Centurion

No. You can't change the drive letter assignments for Hard drive partitions. Windows does it automatically. Windows assigns drive letters in this order:<P>1 - Primary IDE channel, master drive, primary partitions.<BR>2 - Primary IDE channel, slave drive, primary partitions.<BR>3 - Secondary IDE channel, master drive, primary partitions.<BR>4 - Secondary IDE channel, slave drive, primary partitions.<BR>5 - Primary IDE channel, master drive, logical drives in extended partition.<BR>6 - Primary IDE channel, slave drive, logical drives in extended partition.<BR>7 - Secondary IDE channel, master drive, logical drives in extended partition.<BR>8 - Secondary IDE channel, slave drive, logical drives in extended partition.<P>I believe this is how it works. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong.<BR>I'm sure it's in the regisrty somewhere, but Windows 9x does this automatically when it boots, so the changes won't make any difference.<BR> <BR>You can change drive letter assignments in NT and Windows 2000.  

i think it goes.<P>1st partition on the Primary master.<BR>1st partition on the secondary master.<BR>1st partition of scsi stuff.<BR>then it starts going though the other partitions.<P><BR>It gets to be a pain in the ass if you install anything not on the C drive and do hardware changes.  

Ars Praefectus

I think it also depends on what the boot device order is in the BIOS if you have SCSI and IDE drives mixed.<P>-H  

Ars Tribunus Militum

• May 14, 2001

In NT/2K the drive mapping can be found in HKLM\System\MountedDevices\, IIRC you need to use regedt32 to change them, or just use the GUI disk manager.<P>For DOS-WinMe, the letter for hard drives are assigned by the <B>BIOS</B> and the only way to change them is to physically switch the connections they are on or changing the boot order.<P>Good luck.  

kalahari bushman

Moonlitknight, ars scholae palatinae.

• May 15, 2001

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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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Manually assigning a drive letter using CMD/Diskpart

[Localization from this article: Manuelles Zuweisen eines Laufwerksbuchstaben mit CMD bzw. Diskpart - Microsoft Community ]

Technical Difficulty: Expert

Applies to: Windows 10 & 11

In some cases, Windows will not assign a drive letter automatically to an inserted drive. For example, this can happen when using a Windows installation media.

In that case, you can use diskpart to manually assign a drive letter.

NOTE: If your drive doesn't get assigned a drive letter, even though you are in a normal Windows environment, this can indicate a problem with the drive. Please back up your files in that case.

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>".

Assign the drive letter using "assign letter=<letter>".

You can now exit diskpart by typing "exit" and switch to the drive using "<letter>:".

It should also be available from Windows Explorer now.

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Thanks for the tutorial, I don't think I need to use Google for it anymore!

Congrats on Article Author too! :)

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Thanks for the tutorial, I don't think I need to use Google for it anymore! Congrats on Article Author too! :)

4 people found this comment helpful

Thanks! Happy I could help! :)

1 person found this comment helpful

Very helpful Thanks.

3 people found this comment helpful

Thank for this informative article.

I ran this in PowerShell PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> GWMI -namespace root\cimv2 -class win32_volume | FL -property DriveLetter, DeviceID

The results are below. I need to know more about the DriveLetter, that does not have a letter and I cannot give it a letter, as you can see in DiskPart.

I'm sure someone personally hacking my computer. I'm wondering if this them hiding on it, and that is why I someone is typing over me and has more control at times of my computer then I do. Maybe a hidden AD Hoc.

I have searched for this on Google I'm either getting blocked or there is no information out there on this.

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> GWMI -namespace root\cimv2 -class win32_volume | FL -property DriveLetter, DeviceID

DriveLetter : B:

DeviceID : \\?\Volume{26xxxxxx--xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxxxx}\

DriveLetter : C:

DriveLetter :

DeviceID : \\?\Volume{d5xxxxxx--xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxxxx}\

DriveLetter : D:

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> DiskPart

Microsoft DiskPart version 10.0.19041.1

Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.

On computer: My Computer

DISKPART> List Volume

Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info

---------- --- --- -------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- --------

Volume 0 D RAW DVD-ROM 2048 B Healthy

Volume 1 B System Rese NTFS Partition 100 MB Healthy System

Volume 2 C NTFS Partition 698 GB Healthy Boot

2 people found this comment helpful

I followed the instructions to CHANGE the letters assigned for three external hard drives. (The computer had named them E, F, G but gave the names to the wrong external hard drive) I changed the letters to the correct names singly (I disconnected the two not being adjusted) Now, I have 2 E, 2 F, 2 G names in the list (when accessed through File Explorer. When I click on "This PC", it shows just the one of each. If I click on either, or both of the same letter name, the same exact files will open. This is annoying. Anyone have a clue what can be done? This is on a brand new computer running Windows 11.

Sorry about the late reply.

That sounds weird... Usually, windows doesn't allow you to assign a drive letter twice.

If you want to change the letters, you usually have to remove them first and then reassign them.

Can you send me a screenshot of disk management, and of the list of volumes?

the partition that is not shown in diskpart is most likely some sort of recovery or reserved partition.

This is not the typical way of hiding an infection with malware...

Also, do note that your ESP (Volume B) should not be mounted, since modifying it can corrupt your Bootloader.

As for the suspected hacking, what symptoms did you observe? Mouse moving on its own, high resource usage, unexpected firewall prompts? Other things?

If you have a compromised system, its almost impossible to clean it from infections without doing a clean install of windows. I would suggest you do that if you suspect an infection. It will take time though and will delete everything on your PC. (Including files, programs, settings.) Create a backup before you reinstall.

There are no viruses nor malware on this computer. I believe it is a reflection of the original name choice. The information contained on each external hard drive is identical, yet when I go into MY PC, it only shows one set of externals. I am afraid to delete one of the duplicates because it might be just mirrored and it will make everything go away. I have way too many things on these external hard drives to lose any of them.

Thanks for your input. Jan

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Editing Drive Letter Assignments

• 3 contributors

The code example in this topic shows you how to add or remove persistent drive letter assignments. These drive letter assignments persist through system shutdown. For more information, see Assigning a Drive Letter to a Volume .

The code example uses the following functions: DefineDosDevice , DeleteVolumeMountPoint , GetVolumeNameForVolumeMountPoint , and SetVolumeMountPoint .

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Additional resources

How do you get Windows 98 to assign a drive letter to a newly attached drive that it is able to see but has not assigned a drive letter to?

if the drive formatted? check drive properties (right click on new drive), and see if it has a file system on it. FAT/FAT32/NTFS if not right click drive again and click format quick is ok if it is a new drive, if not just click start should have a letter after format and a restart.

Add your answer:

How many hard disk drives are listed and which drive letter are assigned to them?

You have no hard drives listed. You have the ability to assign any drive letter (except the Main 'C' ) to your hard drives using "Computer Management"

How do you assign a drive letter to a CD DVD combo drive in Windows 98?

Windows 98 should automaticly assign it a drive letter. You can try running new hardware wizard in the control panel if the wizard does not find it you might also check the jumper on the drive itself and make sure it is not conflicting with any other drive (set the same as the hard drive)

What does the html command object classid accomplish?

Classid is used to assign a particular object to a given string. For example, if the classid="t", then the letter 't' maybe used to refer to the particular object that was assigned.

How do you assign new drive letter for unallocated space?

Windows does not allow you to label an unallocated space. You must create a partition and format first if you want to make use of this space.

How do you save a file in pen drive?

The same way you do with any other drive. When you insert the pen drive into your computer, Windows will assign it a letter (unless that capability has been disabled on a network).

What is an 8 letter word that means assign?

What is a 6 letter word apportion.

assign divide

What is the letter assigned for the primary hard drive?

In Windows, it is called "C:" (without quotes). In Linux, it is called "/" (also without quotes). I don't know about Mac, sorry.

What is the default letter assigned for hard drive?

How do you format a usb flash drive from the windows command prompt.

After the USB drive has been inserted, it will be assigned a drive letter. From this point, you would open the CMD prompt and type: FORMAT F: (enter) Be sure to replace F: with the thumb drive's drive letter which is assigned by your operating system. If you format the wrong drive letter, you will lose all the data stored on that drive letter.

Is it correct to say Attached are a letter and an invoice?

Try this: Attached is a letter and invoice.

Which is the default letter assigned for the primary hard drive?

In the IBM and Microsoft DOS, Windows and OS/2 platform, the primary hard drive is assigned the letter C and is referenced as C:. In the Unix/Linux related environment, its name depends on the type of drive and connection such as sda hda fda but when mounted it is referenced as the root directory (or "/").

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How to Reassign Drive Letters in Windows

They aren’t cast in stone..

by Leo A. Notenboom

Drive letters are not assigned at format time, and yes, they can be changed. In fact, it’s quite easy to change them; I do it all the time — for every drive except “C:”, that is. “C:” is special.

First, let’s look at the how.

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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.

Disk Manager

Right -click on the Start menu and click on Disk management .

This will bring up the Disk Management tool.

You’ll see that I have several disks:

• C: is my system drive
• L: is a second internal data drive
• E: is my DVD/CD drive

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

Changing an assigned drive letter

Close any programs that might be accessing the drive you’re about to change. Right-click on the drive in Disk Management. In my case, that’s the L: drive. Click on Change Drive Letter and Paths… in the resulting context menu .

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

Click on the drive letter (L: in the example above), and then on Remove . You will get a warning.

It’s not enough that you’ve closed programs currently accessing the drive. Any program configured for any reason to access drives using the old letter will need to be adjusted to use the drive letter we’re about to assign. You may get additional warnings if the drive is still in use. You can proceed and then reboot when we’re done for the changes to take effect, so click Yes .

Right-click on the disk in Disk Manager again (it won’t show a drive letter, since we just removed that), and click on  Change Drive Letter and Paths…  again. This time, click on the Add… button in the resulting dialog. You’ll be presented with a dialog allowing you to select from available drive letters.

I’ve clicked on D — a more sensible assignment for an internal drive. Click on OK to make the assignment.

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.

If you’re dealing with a monster machine with over 26 drives attached (or connected via networking), you’ll need to use the path technique. 26 Drives? Is There a Way Around the 26-drive Limit in Windows?  describes your solution.

Paths, referenced throughout the dialog, are an alternate way to refer to drives without consuming another drive letter. It’s an advanced topic, and I won’t go into detail, but the short version is simply:

• Create an empty folder on your C: drive. Perhaps call that folder “D-Drive”.
• Assign the path “C:\D-Drive” to the drive, using steps similar to what we’ve just done.

Now you can access the contents of the D: drive as if it were in the “D-Drive” folder on C:. You can even remove the drive letter assignment, if you like, and only access it via that path.

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.

A: and B: were originally reserved for two floppy drives that were used on the first PCs before hard drives were added. When hard drives came along, they were assigned the next available letter, C:. While floppy drives are no longer common, the default hard drive assignment at C: has persisted, and A: and B: are available for use however you like.

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1 : Not unsurprisingly, it’s a side effect of me playing with this feature in preparation for updating this article.

82 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

I just installed a 1X2 TX RAID system using RAID 1 for mirroring. Went I went to install windows it had my drives assigned to J: for the root! Now using disk management under XP told me that I could not reassign the Windows Root Drive (J:) How do I do this without reinstalling windows?

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

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Did you read the article? It explicitly talks about exactly that.

Leo —–BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE—– Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (MingW32)

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!!???

HI, I had to reistall my DVD on the “F” drive, and now its missing. Now I only have the “G” drive . Is there anything I can do?

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!

I have a simular problem… except I have 3 drives in my pc. 1st one is an older ata and the other 2 are newer sata drives. when I re-installed windows it assigned my drives as follows: c: is the older ata d: is the first sata e: is the second sata Now here is my problem. When Windows was installed it went on to the D: drive but C: is my boot drive. All the boot files are on that drive and not on the other two. I would like to remove my C: as it is getting older and does not sound that good.

There is currently nothing on either my C: (except the boot files) and E: drive. I have tried to copy the boot files over to E: and removed C: and swapped the cables around but it still will not boot up.

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!

I freakkin LOVE YOU!

My external one day just went from G to N.

Dunno why. It irritated me to know end. And, because that’s one of my photo storage units the Lightroom has assigned to it’s backups and databases…I was looking at a heap of crappy, crappy trouble.

You have saved my A$$.

Thank you again,

I have an external drive which I back up to daily came to back up files and 2 things, the drive id has changed to F: and it states its full and do I want to format it…obviousley NO.

I thought if I renamed it to its previous drive letter in this case G:it would recognise the path and my files would be there, wrong so I have a drive that has heaps of data on it yet it shows it as full disc with no bytes and I cant read it.

Please can you help and advise what I need to do.

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.

I found this article ages ago and it was very useful at the time but I never commented. I’ve searched for the page again because I had a friend with the same issue I had originally and this page easily explained how to change the drive letter with screen shots etc which is really helpful.

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

Thanks, this works on Windows 7.

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!

I wiped my hard drive to re-install windows XP. When installing it used the “H” as my system drive. Can I change this to “C” without problems, or without removing windows and starting over? When patitioning the drive, it showed other drives, but it wouldn’t let me delete them. This is my 1st time installing windows.

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

I have multiple drives mapped, and it looks like I accidentally remapped the e: (my CD drive) to a file server. I have disconnected e:/ drive, but I still cannot see the CD drive to relabel it. Help.

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

ask-leo.com/can_i_make_my_c_partition_bigger_by_taking_space_from_d.html

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)!

I do not see what the advantage of the drive letter system is when compared to the UNIX system of mounting somewhere on the / tree. In fact I think the UNIX system abstracts better.

E.g. imagine that you have a certain application that needs to write to some directory a lot and you want to give it a faster disk. With UNIX you just connect the disk and mount it on the right place. With Windows you will have to connect the disk and then change the configuration of the software to use the new path which may or may not be a hassle.

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.

At some point in your article, you mentioned to click on Removing the drive letter and thereafter to right-click on the same partition without a drive letter now in order to change and assign a new drive letter. Why cannot one just click on “change ” in the first place without removing the drive letter?. I have done it a lot of times in the way I just described without any problem.

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?

Ah, yes, if you have two different physical disks, there’s no practical way to make one bigger and the other smaller. It’s probably most effective to:

• Image backup the too-small drive
• Replace it with a larger drive
• restore the image to the replacement drive
• Adjust the partitions as needed to ensure the entire drive is being used.

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:.

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How to Use the Diskpart Utility to Assign and Remove Drive Letters

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.

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Welcome to Western Digital Support

Steps to change drive letter assignment in windows.

Windows uses MountMgr to manage drive letters. MountMgr will assign the next available drive letter to each device added, regardless of type. With the system drive assigned the letter C: , there may be other IDE, SATA or USB devices, such as a DVDROM or a Flash drive assigned to letters D: and E: . When adding another drive, Windows 10 / 8 / 7 / Vista and XP will assign the next drive letter available, which in this case would be drive letter F: .

Drive letters can usually be manually changed using Disk Management , however there may be some exceptions. For full details please see the relevant Instructions or Microsoft Knowledge Base article below:

Drive letters can be changed by going to Disk Management and requesting the change manually. For this, please follow the instructions below:

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Windows 8 End Of Support , for more information refer to Answer ID 30413: Microsoft Windows 8 and 8.1: End of Support .

Windows 7 End Of Support , for more information refer to Answer ID 29004: Microsoft Windows 7: End of Support .

In order to change a drive letter assigned to a hard drive, please follow the instructions on the following Microsoft Knowledge Base Article:

Assign a mount point folder path to a drive

Windows Vista End Of Support , for more information refer to Answer ID 23577: Microsoft Windows XP and Vista: End of Support .

How to change, add, or remove a drive letter in Vista

Windows XP End Of Support , for more information refer to Answer ID 23577: Microsoft Windows XP and Vista: End of Support .

How to change, add, or remove a drive letter in XP

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• DiskPart Command Line Utility

[Free Guide]: Use Diskpart Assign Drive Letter in Windows 11, 10, 8, 7

This post will show you how to use Diskpart assign drive letter in Windows 11, 10, 8, 7. In addition, another free GUI software will be introduced to assign or remove the drive letters.

Why use Diskpart assign drive letter?

As we all know, Windows assigns drive letters to all available drives on your computer, such as internal hard drives, optical drives, SD cards, and external USB drives. A drive letter is an alphabetical identifier for a volume, and each drive letter can be used once on a computer.

But sometimes, users want to change the original drive letter to another drive letter. Or due to some operation, the drive letter will not be available and the user needs to assign a new drive letter. So a computer-experienced user might assign drive letter by Diskpart, as this is the faster way. The purpose of this article is to provide you with some methods for assigning a drive letter , including Diskpart, Disk Management, and another easier way.

Step-by-step: Assign drive letter by Windows built-in tools

Windows OS users know they have two amazing tools for managing disks and partitions - Disk Management and Diskpart.

The Disk Management tool in Windows provides you with an easy-to-use graphical interface to manage your disks with a single mouse click. And Diskpart is a command-line tool that allows you to quickly manage your disks or partitions from the command prompt. The next section will show you how to use Disk Management and Diskpart to assign drive letters.

│ Use Diskpart to assign drive letter

Diskpart is a Windows built-in tool that you can use to manage your hard drive, like format disk partition, create partition, delete partition , etc. Well, how to use Command Prompt Diskpart assign drive letter? The following parts may help you a lot.

Step 1.  Press "Windows + R". Then, type "diskpart" and press Enter.

Step 2. Type in "list volume" and press Enter. Now, you can see all volumes on PC.

Step 3. Type in "select volume 7" and press Enter(here take volume 7 as an example).

Step 4.  Finally, type in“assign letter=F” and press Enter.

If you want to remove the drive letter, type “remove letter=X”(X is the drive letter you want to remove).

Actually, you may assign a drive letter when you create a new one. For that, you need to create partition first. After creating a partition, type “assign letter=?” to that partition. Or, if there is some volume hidden, it will not have the drive letter, to unhide it, you need to assign a drive letter for it. 

│ Assign drive letter via Disk Management

In addition to Diskpart, Disk Management may be another good choice to assign drive letter.

Step 1.  Press “ Win + R ” to open the “ Run ” window and type  diskmgmt.msc  in the box.

Step 2 . Right-click the drive you want to assign, and select change Drive Letter and Paths  in the pop-up window.

Step 3.  Click  Change  to summon the next window.

Notice:  If you want to remove the drive letter of your partition, you can select " Remove " and follow the instructions step by step.

Step 4.  After that, you should choose the new drive letter from the drop list, and then, click  OK .

Now, do you understand how to use Disk Management and Diskpart assign drive letter?

Although it's convenient for most people, you need to be aware that sometimes you can't assign drive letter successfully, because Disk Management and Diskpart only support assigning drive letter with FAT or NTFS. When the drive's file system is another type, you can format it to NTFS or FAT, or use another method to assign a drive letter.

Diskpart assign drive letter alternative

Disk Management and Diskpart are not perfect because they have limitations. Fortunately, there is an easier way to make up for their shortcomings perfectly.

AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard is a completely free third-party partition manager. It supports users to assign drive letters through a more friendly interface, which can be done with just a few clicks, much simpler than Diskpart. Also, it can assign drive letter on any file system. More importantly, it has more complete functions and allows you to manage disks flexibly.

Step 1. Launch AOMEI Partition Assistant, it will show you all storage devices in the main interface. you can see the removable drive doesn't have a drive letter. If you want to assign a drive letter for the drive, here you need to right click it, select Advanced-> Change Drive Letter.

Step 2. Then, select a drive letter for the drive.

Step 3. Click Apply to submit the task.

Now, do you know how to use Diskpart assign drive letter? If you are a user who has a computer background, Diskpart may be the quickest method to assign the drive letter. However, if you are normal user, AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard is the correct choice.  After you upgrade to AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional , there are more advanced features you can try, such as allocating free space from one drive to C, and Move the installed app from one drive to another.

Last but not least, although the system drive letter can be changed, do not do it because that would make the system unable to boot.

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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.

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

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Mauro Huculak is technical writer for WindowsCentral.com. His primary focus is to write comprehensive how-tos to help users get the most out of Windows 10 and its many related technologies. He has an IT background with professional certifications from Microsoft, Cisco, and CompTIA, and he's a recognized member of the Microsoft MVP community.

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How-To Geek

How to change a drive letter on windows 10 or windows 11.

You can change your drive letters in Windows 10 and 11 using the Disk Management utility.

Quick Links

What changing a drive letter does, how to change a drive letter, how to fix programs broken by changing a drive letter.

Changing the letter of a drive is easy on Windows 10 and Windows 11, but you should do it as soon as you add the drive to prevent future hassles. Find out how to change a drive letter here.

Windows assigns drive letters alphabetically --- starting with C --- when they're initialized. If you want to change a drive letter, you should do it before you install anything on the drive. Changing a drive letter after programs are installed could break them since there will be references to an installation location that is no longer there.

Windows has gotten pretty smart about updating shortcuts so that programs work after changing a drive letter. Most of your applications' shortcuts will probably be automatically corrected. Unfortunately, Windows isn't as good about updating file associations. You'll have to manually set the default apps associated with files to fix file associations if they were broken by changing the drive letter.

It is possible to change the boot drive letter to something else, but we don't recommend it. Changing C:\ to another letter is likely to result in severe issues, like a PC that cannot boot into Windows at all. Even if it were able to boot, there would be a huge number of programs that would not be able to run.

Technically speaking, while they are commonly called drive letters, each letter actually refers to a partition on a disk. If you have multiple partitions on a single disk, you will need to assign a letter to each partition to make them all accessible. If a disk has just a single partition, it will just have a single letter pointing to that partition. (However, you do not have to assign a letter to each partition. Partitions without drive letters will not appear in File Explorer and elsewhere.)

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."

Identify the drive you'd like to change in the Disk Management Window. In this example, we'll change the letter of the D:\ drive to J:\. You can right-click the drive on the text list, or on the menu below. Either works.

Select "Change Drive Letter and Paths" in the right-click menu that appears.

In the window that pops up, click "Change."

Select whatever letter you want from the drop-down menu. Then click "Ok."

Two popups will warn you about changing your drive letter. Click "Yes" on both of them, and then restart your computer.

Once Windows has restarted, the drive letter should be changed.

There are a few ways you can fix a program broken by changing the drive letter.

Fix The Shortcut

If you're lucky, the only thing that is broken is the shortcut. Fix a shortcut by right-clicking the shortcut on your desktop, and then click Properties.

You need to change the target of the shortcut to the new drive letter.

For example, if GIMP was previously installed at " D :\GIMP 2\bin\gimp-2.10.exe," and you changed the D drive to J, change the target of the shortcut to " J :\GIMP 2\bin\gimp-2.10.exe."

Finalize the change by clicking "Apply" and then "Ok."

Reinstall the Program

Reinstalling the program will generate new entries in the registry, so everything on the computer will know where to look for the program. Some installers won't like reinstalling directly over existing files, so you may need to rename or delete the old installation first.

Change the Drive Letter Back

If you changed the drive letter of a drive with a lot of programs installed, it might be easier to change the drive letter back. Changing the drive letter back should automatically fix any programs and file associations that were broken.

Edit the Registry

You can break programs, or even Windows itself, by editing the registry. Be careful, and learn about how to edit the registry before you try it. Make sure you backup the Windows registry first. You should not attempt this method unless you have no other options.

Windows, and a lot of programs, track where programs are installed via the Windows registry. It is possible to manually adjust the registry to fix broken programs. Keep in mind that there could be dozens of registry entries you need to edit. A program like GIMP can have registry entries for the context menu, for the "Open With" menu, for any file associations, and for the location of its executables. Other programs may only have a few entries related to where it is installed.

If you're not deterred, here's how you do it.

First, you need to know where the program was previously installed. In this case, the program was installed to the "D:\GIMP 2" folder, and the executables were found the "D:\GIMP 2\bin" sub-folder. It is now located at "J:\GIMP 2" instead.

We need to update the registry to reflect the change in location. Click the Start button, type "regedit" into the search bar, right-click Regedit, and click "Run as administrator."

In Regedit, hit Ctrl+F to bring up a search window. Type in the old location for the program you're trying to fix --- "D:\GIMP 2" for our example --- then click "Find Next."

Once Regedit has found something with "D:\GIMP 2" as part of a path, it'll show it to you. Here is an example from the GIMP search.

To actually change them, double click the name of the registry entry you want to modify. Then change the drive letter to J, or whatever you chose. If you didn't otherwise move the folder, leave the rest of the path alone. Then click "Ok."

You'll need to repeat this multiple times. To find the next result using your search term, you can hit the F3 key. There will be a popup once you've found all of the entries.

Changing drive letters can be a simple way to customize your PC. Do it before you install anything on the drive, however. You'll prevent any problems before they occur, and probably save yourself quite a bit of troubleshooting.