How to change the drive letter in Windows 10

What's important to know

In addition to the special name you can specify, Windows assigns a Latin letter from A to Z to all physical and virtual disks and their partitions. This applies to hard drives, SSDs, USB sticks, SD cards, and other types of drives.

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

All disks except C are allowed to have any free letter. It is technically possible to change the system partition letter as well, but it is better not to do so. The point is that the files of installed programs and system components are registered in the registry with a binding to the letter, and after changing it will not work correctly. The same applies to other additional disks, on which you have installed applications and games. It is better not to change their names.

If your computer has no floppy drives, you can also use A and B. However, the system will tell you which ones are free and simply will not let you assign the ones you already have.

How to change the drive letter in Windows 10 via Disk Management

1. Open the Run dialog box by pressing Win + R, type diskmgmt.msc and press Enter.
2. Find the drive or partition you need by its name or size. Right-click on the flash drive and select "Change drive letter and paths...".
3. Highlight the current letter and click "Change".
4. Specify a new letter and click OK.
5. Confirm the action by clicking "Yes".

How to change a drive letter in Windows 10 from the command line

1. Open a search and start typing "command line". When you find the utility, click "Run as administrator".
2. Enter diskpart and press Enter.
3. Use the list volume command to display a list of disks and find the desired one.
4. Type select volume X, but substitute the current drive letter for X.
5. Use the assign letter=Y command to assign a new letter instead of Y.