Assign, change, or remove a drive letter
Updated: January 21, 2005
To assign, change, or remove a drive letter
- Open Computer Management (Local).
- In the console tree, click Computer Management (Local),
click Storage, and then click Disk Management.
- Right-click a partition, logical drive, or volume, and then click Change
Drive Letter and Paths.
- Do one of the following:
- To assign a drive letter, click Add, click the drive letter
you want to use, and then click OK.
- To modify a drive letter, click it, click Change, click the
drive letter you want to use, and then click OK.
- To remove a drive letter, click it, and then click Remove.
Important
- Be careful when making drive-letter assignments because many
MS-DOS and Windows programs make references to a specific drive
letter. For example, the path environment variable shows specific
drive letters in conjunction with program names.
Notes
- To perform this procedure on a local computer, you must be a
member of the Backup Operators group or Administrators group on the
local computer, or you must have been delegated the appropriate
authority. To perform this procedure remotely, you must be a member
of the Backup Operators group or Administrators group on the remote
computer. If the computer is joined to a domain, members of the
Domain Admins group might be able to perform this procedure. As a
security best practice, consider using Run as to perform this
procedure. For more information, see Default
local groups
, Default
groups
, and Using
Run as.
- To open Computer Management, click Start, click Control
Panel, double-click Administrative Tools, and then
double-click Computer Management.
- A computer can use up to 26 drive letters. Drive letters A and B
are typically reserved for a floppy disk drives. If the computer
does not have a floppy disk drive, you can assign drive letters A
and B to removable drives, hard disk drives, or mapped network
drives. Hard disk drives are typically assigned drive letters C
through Z, while mapped network drives are assigned drive letters in
reverse order (Z through C).
- You cannot change the drive letter of the system volume or boot
volume.
- An error message may appear when you attempt to assign a letter to
a volume, CD-ROM drive, or other removable media device, possibly
because it is in use by a program in the system. If this happens,
close the program accessing the volume or drive, and then click the Change
Drive Letter and Paths command again.
- You can also mount a local drive at an empty folder on an NTFS
volume using a drive path instead of a drive letter. For more
information, see Related Topics.
Top of page
- Open Command Prompt.
-
Type:
diskpart
-
At the DISKPART prompt, type:
list volume
Make note of the number of the simple volume whose drive letter
you want to assign, change, or remove.
-
At the DISKPART prompt, type:
select volumen
Select the volume, where n is the volume's number, whose
drive letter you want to assign, change, or remove.
-
At the DISKPART prompt, type one of the following:
• |
assign letter=L
Where L is the drive letter you want to assign or
change.
|
• |
remove letter=L
Where L is the drive letter you want to remove.
|
list volume
|
Displays a list of basic and dynamic volumes on all disks.
|
select volume
|
Selects the specified volume, where n is the volume
number, and gives it focus. If no volume is specified, the select
command lists the current volume with focus. You can specify the
volume by number, drive letter, or mount point path. On a basic
disk, selecting a volume also gives the corresponding partition
focus.
|
assign letter=L
|
Assigns a drive letter, L, to the volume with focus.
If no drive letter is specified, then the next available drive
letter is assigned. If the drive letter is already in use, an
error is generated.
|
remove letter=L
|
Removes the drive letter, L, from the volume with
focus. If no drive letter or mount point is specified, then DiskPart
removes the first drive letter or mount point it encounters.
The remove command can be used to change the drive
letter associated with a removable drive. You cannot remove the
drive letters on system, boot, or paging volumes. In addition,
you cannot remove the drive letter for an OEM partition, any GPT
partition with an unrecognized GUID, or any of the special,
non-data, GPT partitions such as the EFI system partition.
|
Notes
• |
To perform this procedure on a local computer, you must be a
member of the Backup Operators group, Administrators group, or
you must have been delegated the appropriate authority. If the
computer is joined to a domain, members of the Domain Admins
group might be able to perform this procedure. As a security
best practice, consider using Run as to perform this procedure.
For more information, see Default
local groups
, Default
groups
, and Using
Run as
.
|
• |
To open a command prompt, click Start, point to All
programs, point to Accessories, and then click Command
prompt.
|
• |
A computer can use up to 26 drive letters. Drive letters A
and B are typically reserved for a floppy disk drives. If the
computer does not have a floppy disk drive, you can assign drive
letters A and B to removable drives, hard disk drives, or mapped
network drives. Hard disk drives are typically assigned drive
letters C through Z, while mapped network drives are assigned
drive letters in reverse order (Z through C).
|
• |
You cannot change the drive letter of the system volume or
boot volume.
|
• |
An error message may appear when you attempt to assign a
letter to a volume, CD-ROM drive, or other removable media
device, possibly because it is in use by a program in the
system. If this happens, close the program accessing the volume
or drive, and then click the Change Drive Letter and Paths
command again.
|
• |
You can also mount a local drive at an empty folder on an
NTFS volume using a drive path instead of a drive letter. For
more information, see Related Topics.
|
• |
For more information about DiskPart, see Related
Topics.
|
Source: http://technet2.microsoft.com
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