How to change drive letters in Windows 10 (2024)

  1. Column
  2. TECHNOLOGY Q&A

By J. Carlton Collins, CPA


Q. How difficult is it to change drive letters in Windows 10?

A. Changing a drive letter in Windows 10 is relatively easy, as follows. Right-click the Windows 10 Menu button and select Disk Management to display a list of all available hard drives. Right-click the specific hard drive letter you want to change, and select Change Drive Letter and Paths. Click the Add button, select a new drive letter, and then click the Change button, as pictured below.

How to change drive letters in Windows 10 (1)

Notes:

  1. Letters A and B are reserved for floppy drives.
  2. The drive letter for the system volume or boot partition (usually drive C) cannot be modified or changed.
  3. Any letter between C and Z can be assigned to a hard disk drive, CD drive, DVD drive, portable external hard disk drive, or USB flash memory key drive.
  4. If you change the drive letter for drives where applications or programs are installed, those applications or programs may or may not function properly after the change because they might refer to the original path used to install those products. In this case, you would likely need to reinstall those applications or programs for them to work properly.

About the author

J. Carlton Collins (carlton@asaresearch.com) is a technology consultant, a conference presenter, and a JofA contributing editor.

Submit a question

Do you have technology questions for this column? Or, after reading an answer, do you have a better solution? Send them to jofatech@aicpa.org. We regret being unable to individually answer all submitted questions.

How to change drive letters in Windows 10 (2024)

FAQs

How to change drive letters in Windows 10? ›

On Windows Settings, click “System.” Once you are on “System” page, click “Storage” and then click “Manage Disks and Volumes.” This will open the page where you will change the drive letter. Go to the drive you want to change letter and click “Properties.” Within Volume Data section, click “Change drive letter.”

How do I change my drive letter without losing data? ›

Open Disk Management from Windows 10 menu and right-click the particular hard drive letter you need to change. Tap the "Change Drive Letter and Paths" optionthen press Add. Choose another drive letter for it, and afterward tap the "Change" button, as shown, and this can be a solution to how to switch drive letters.

How to swap drive letters? ›

A. Changing a drive letter in Windows 10 is relatively easy, as follows. Right-click the Windows 10 Menu button and select Disk Management to display a list of all available hard drives. Right-click the specific hard drive letter you want to change, and select Change Drive Letter and Paths.

Why can't I change drive letter and path? ›

Why can't I change drive letter and paths? The change drive letter and paths option greyed out can occur for a few reasons: The volume is not formatted in FAT or NTFS. The drive is write-protected.

How to change drive h to g? ›

Open Disk Management. Locate the drive you want to change. Right-click and choose Change Drive Letter and Paths > Change.

How are Windows drive letters assigned? ›

When you plug in a USB drive, your system assigns it the first available letter. If that letter is still available when you plug it back in, it will likely be assigned the same letter.

How do I change the permanent drive letter in Windows 10? ›

Hit Windows Key + X on your keyboard, and select Disk Management from the menu. 2. Right click the USB drive to which you want to assign a persistent drive letter and select “Change Drive Letter and Paths.”

Does initializing a disk erase data? ›

Solely initializing a disk won't erase its data. But in order to use the disk, you need to further partition and format the disk, which will cause data loss.

Is removing drive letter safe? ›

There are drives whose letter you can safely change. If a partition contains only data files that you rarely use, changing the drive letter may cause an occasional annoyance but rarely anything worse. External drives' letters can almost always be changed without problems.

What is the default letter assignment for the hard drive? ›

By default, in Windows (and in DOS before it), the boot drive is C:. Other drives, whether they're internal, external, optical, or additional partitions, get other letters, usually in the order they were assigned: D:, E:, and so on. What about drives A: and B:? Their absence is a historical relic.

How to change directory drive letter command? ›

To change the current drive, you can firstly type cd \ to go to the root directory, and then enter the drive letter followed by a colon to enter the target drive, e.g. I:.

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