Windows 10: Change and Assign Drive Letter in Windows 10

How to: Change and Assign Drive Letter in Windows 10

How to Change and Assign Drive Letter in Windows 10


By default, Windows 10 will automatically assign an available drive letter to any connected internal and external storage devices.

Windows progresses through the alphabet from A to Z to assign available drive letters to devices as connected.

• Windows reserves the drive letters A and B for floppy drives.
• The drive letter C can only be used for the drive Windows is installed on. If you multi boot operating systems, the currently running Windows will always show its drive letter as C.

If you use multiple USB drives, then you may have noticed that the driver letter can sometimes be different each time you connect one.

If you like, you can change the drive letter of a drive to be any available drive letter you want instead of the driver letter automatically assigned by Windows. When you change the drive letter of a drive, it will assign a permanent letter to the drive that will not change on your PC unless you change it.

This tutorial will show you different ways on how to change the drive letter of a drive to assign a permanent drive letter you want to the drive in Windows 10.

*Warning You must be signed in as an administrator to change or assign a drive letter.


CONTENTS:

• Option One: To Change Drive Letter in Disk Management
• Option Two: To Change Drive Letter in Command Prompt
• Option Three: To Change Drive Letter in PowerShell
• Option Four: To Change Drive Letter in Registry Editor

OPTION ONE [/i] To Change Drive Letter in Disk Management
1. Press the Win+R keys to open Run, type diskmgmt.msc into Run, and click/tap on OK to open Disk Management.

2. Right click or press and hold on the drive (ex: "F") you want to change the drive letter of, and click/tap on Change Drive Letter and Paths. (see screenshot below)



3. Click/tap on the Change button. (see screenshot below)



4. Select (dot) Assign the following drive letter, select an available drive letter you want to assign, and click/tap on OK. (see screenshot below)



5. Click/tap on Yes to confirm. (see screenshot below)



6. When finished, you can close Disk Management if you like.





OPTION TWO [/i] To Change Drive Letter in Command Prompt
1. Open an elevated command prompt.

2. Enter diskpart into the elevated command prompt, and press Enter. (see screenshot below)

3. Enter 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.

5. Enter the command below into the elevated command prompt, and press Enter.
*Arrow select volume <volume number>

*note Substitute <volume number> in the command above with the actual volume number (ex: "5") from step 4 above for the drive you want to change the drive letter of.

For example: select volume 5
6. Enter the command below into the elevated command prompt, and press Enter.
*Arrow assign letter=<new drive letter>

*note Substitute <new drive letter> in the command above with the actual new drive letter (ex: "G") you want to assign to the drive.

For example: assign letter=G

If the new drive letter you assign is not available, you will get an error message indicating so in the command prompt. You will just need to repeat this step to assign an available drive letter.
7. When finished, you can close the elevated command prompt if you like.








OPTION THREE [/i] To Change Drive Letter in PowerShell
1. Open an elevated PowerShell.

2. Enter Get-Partition into the elevated PowerShell, and press Enter. (see screenshot below)

3. Make note of the drive letter (ex: "G") of the drive you want to change.

4. Enter the command below into the elevated PowerShell, and press Enter.
*Arrow Get-Partition -DriveLetter <current drive letter> | Set-Partition -NewDriveLetter <new drive letter>

*note Substitute <current drive letter> in the command above with the actual current drive letter (ex: "G") of the drive you want to change.

Substitute <new drive letter> in the command above with the actual new drive letter (ex: "F") you want to assign to the drive.

For example: Get-Partition -DriveLetter G | Set-Partition -NewDriveLetter F

If the new drive letter you assign is not available, you will get an error message indicating so in PowerShell. You will just need to repeat this step to assign an available drive letter.
5. When finished, you can close the elevated PowerShell if you like.








OPTION FOUR [/i] To Change Drive Letter in Registry Editor
1. Open Registry Editor (regedit.exe).

2. Navigate to the key below in the left pane of Registry Editor. (see screenshot below)
*Arrow HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices




3. In the right pane of the MountedDevices key, right click or press and hold on the binary (REG_BINARY) value (ex: "\DosDevices\G:") for the drive letter (ex: "G") of the drive you want to change, and click/tap on Rename. (see screenshot below)



4. Rename only the drive letter part of the binary (REG_BINARY) value (ex: "\DosDevices\G:") name with an available drive letter (ex: "\DosDevices\F:") you want for the drive instead, and press Enter to apply. (see screenshot below)



5. When finished, you can close Registry Editor.

6. restart the computer to apply.

That's it,
Shawn


Related Tutorials

• How to Remove a Drive Letter in Windows 10
• How to Hide or Show Drive Letters in Windows 10
• How to Show Drive Letters Before or After Drive Name in Windows 10
• How to Change a Drive Icon in Windows 10
• How to Rename Drive Label in Windows 10
• How to Hide Specified Drives in Windows
• How to Format a Disk or Drive in Windows 10
• How to Delete Volume or Partition in Windows 10
• How to Extend Volume or Partition in Windows 10
• How to Shrink a Volume or Partition in Windows 10
• How to Enable or Disable Automatic Mounting of New Disks and Drives in Windows

:)

 

help. USB drive isn't assigned a drive letter.

Any usb flash drive I plug into my computer isn't assigned a drive letter. The physical drive shows in the "safely remove hardware" but it doesnt show up in disk management. I have tried to populate the volume thru the safely remove hardware properties window and it does pop up in the list but it doesn't stay there. This isn't a format or assign a letter problem. It's more complicated then that. Maybe one of the services needed for usb drive management was disabled? Suggestions needed. btw external usb harddrives work fine.

 

Windows 10 changing USB port drive letters

Hi Joseph,

Thank you for posting your query in Microsoft Community.

I understand the inconvenience you are facing currently.

I would appreciate if you can provide us the following information to help us understand the issue better.

• Since when are you facing this issue?
• Did you make any changes in prior to this issue?

I would like to inform you that the issue might have occurred due to some changes made to your computer.

I suggest you to try changing the drive letter of the drive and check if it helps.

Follow the steps to change the drive letter:

• Press Windows + X keys and click on Disk Management.
• Right click on the external drive and click on Change Drive letter and paths.
• Click on Change the button.
• Under Assign the following Drive letter, select the desired drive letter.
• Click Ok to save changes.

Hope the information helps. Please let us know if the issue persist and we will be happy to assist you further.

 

Drive letters are not available for assigning to unallocated space

Hello Sjoerd,



Thank you for writing to Microsoft Community Forums.



The reason the drive letters are not available to assign are because they might have been assigned to devices which are removed or hidden. I suggest you to check for any hidden devices and remove them to assign the missing drive letters.



Follow the steps mentioned below to check for the hidden or removed devices.

1. Press Windows key + R. This will open
   Run. Alternatively, you can go to Start and search for Run.
   
2. In Run dialog box, type
   devmgmt.msc and hit enter.
   
3. Click on the view tab at the top left hand corner.
   
4. Now select View hidden devices.
   
5. Now look for the hidden devices under storage volumes and
   portable devices.
   
6. Right click on the hidden devices and click on
   uninstall.
   
7. Restart the PC.
   

After restarting the PC, try assigning the drive letter to the unallocated drive and check if the drive letters D, E, F, G, and H appears.



Hope it helps.



Regards,

Prakhar Khare

Microsoft Community – Moderator

 

Windows 10 will not assign a drive letter when connecting a USB Drive (will not release the drive letter when disconnecting as well)

Hi,

I have a very strange problem. I just purchased a new Western Digital My Passport 2 TB USB drive. I have formatted the drive in Fat32 (Required for my device).

1. When I connect the drive the Disk Management application sees the drive but no Driver letter is assigned.
2. Disk Management reports the drive as a Healthy Active Primary partition.
3. I right click on the drive and assign a drive letter which works as expected. I can now access the drive via file explorer and read and write files.
4. If I disconnect the drive, the drive letter remains visible in explorer and changes to "Local Disk"
5. If I reconnect the drive once again a drive letter is not assigned (original drive letter remains listed as "Local Disk" and is inaccessible).
6. I can reassign another drive letter as I did in step 3 above and the issue repeats over and over. Of course each time I have less and less drive letters available to me since the assigned letters never release.
7. In order to reclaim the drive letters I have to reboot (after disabling fast startup in power options, so hardware is re-initialized during reboot). Once reboot is complete all the "Local Disks" created during this process are removed and the drive letters
   are once again available for assignment.
8. This process repeats over and over

Other Observations:

1. I have another 4TB Western Digital My Passport Ultra drive (formatted in Fat32), that does NOT exhibit this behavior. It works normally
2. The problematic drive works fine when connecting to my Mac.
3. All other USB drives and sticks I own do NOT exhibit this behavior.
4. I confirmed in Diskpart that Automatic mounting of new volumes is enable
5. I contacted Western Digital and after working with them for a while their assessment was since the drive works when a drive letter is manually assigned and works fine in a Mac the drive is fine, they suspect this is an issue with Windows 10.
6. As a test I also reformatted the drive using NTFS and the issue still happens

Any assistance is appreciated

 

Assign a drive letter

When I plug an external hard drive to my PC (Windows 10) via the USB, the computer does not recognize it in Windows Explorer. I have to go into Disk Management to assign the drive a letter before I can see it in Windows Explorer. Is there an option in
Windows 10 to automatically assign the drive a letter, and I can see the drive in Windows Explorer, so I do not have to keep having to assign letters to external drives?