How to change drive letter in Windows 10

What is important to know

In addition to the name that the user can specify, Windows assigns the Latin letter from A to Z to all physical and virtual disks, as well as their partitions. This applies to hard drives, SSDs, USB sticks, SD cards and other types of storage devices.

OS assigns letters in order. Historically, the letters A and B were reserved for floppy drives and C for the system partition. Therefore, all new drives and partitions are given letters from E to Z.

All drives except C are allowed to specify any free drive letter. Technically, the letter of the system partition can also be changed, but it is better not to do this. The fact is that the files of installed programs and system components are registered in the registry with reference to a letter and after changing it, they will not be able to work correctly. The same applies to other additional drives on which you have installed applications and games. It is better not to touch their names.

If your computer does not have floppy drives, you can also use letters A and B. However, the system itself will tell you which of them are free, and simply will not let you assign an already occupied one.

How to change a drive letter in Windows 10 through Disk Management

For example, let's reassign the USB drive letter E. Let's take advantage of the fact that the letter A is not occupied and assign it. As a bonus, the drive letter will not change every time you connect.

Call the Run dialog with the Win + R keyboard shortcut, enter diskmgmt.msc and press Enter.

Find the disc or chapter you want by name or size. Right-click on the flash drive and select "Change drive letter or drive path ...".

Highlight the current letter and click "Change".

Enter a new letter and click OK.

Confirm the action by clicking "Yes".

How to change drive letter in Windows 10 via command line

Open your search and start typing "command line". When the utility is found, click "Run as administrator".

Enter diskpart and press Enter.

Team list volume display the list of drives and find the one you want.

Drive in select volume X, only substitute the current letter of the desired drive instead of X. In our example, this is E.

Team assign letter = Y assign a new letter by substituting the desired one for Y. We will have it A.

Artyom Kozoriz