How to Change A Drive Letter In Windows

Monday, October 16, 2006

change drive letter assignment

I use Microsoft’s free backup tool SyncToy to do basic backup of several important folders onto an external usb drive. SyncToy does not allow the user to change drive letters once set in the application.

That poses a problem when plugging and unplugging numerous external devices like digital cameras, PDAs and flash drives. The assigned drive letters change as you add or remove peripherals. When SyncToy is run again, the drive letter originally assigned in SyncToy may not exist.

To manually change the drive letter in Windows XP go to the Control Panel.


  1. click on Performance and Maintenance (in Category view) or Administrative Tools/ Computer Management/Disk Management (in Classic view)

  2. right click drive, partition or volume you wish to change drive letter

  3. click Change Drive Letter and Paths

  4. click Add

  5. click Assign the following drive letter and select the drive letter from the menu

  6. click OK

The drive letter will be assigned to the drive, partition or volume you specified and the drive letter will show up in the Disk Management tool and in My Computer. 

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