How to Assign letters to Drives on Windows 10

You want to replace the drive letter, or you can't recognize an external hard drive and you need to assign a new drive letter to it? Then worry no more because you don’t have to be a computer expert to do it.

Drive letter refers to an alphabetic character (A-Z) assigned to various physical drives and drives partitions in a computer. Sometimes it becomes necessary to replace/change drive letters, especially if you can’t recognize an external drive.

However, I recommend that you rename the drive that hosts Windows and other installed apps (Normally Drive C). Doing so could affect how apps find that drive and their running. The following are simple tricks that you can use to change/replace drive Letters in your computer.

1. Disk management

How to change the drive letter on Windows 10 using the “Disk management” approach

Step 1: Click Win +R shortcut, type “diskmgmt.msc” (without quotes), press enter and select Mismanagement.

Alternatively, you can right-click the Window start button, scroll down and choose “Disk Management.”

Alternatively, you can click “Windows start bottom” and search “Create and format hard disk partitions”(without quotes). Click on the result to access disc management.

Step 2: Go to the drive that you want to change and right-click on it.

Step 3: On the page that appears, select “Change Drive Letter and Paths.”

Step 4: Select the letter assigned to the drive currently and hit the “Change” button.

Step 5: Check the option that reads, “Assign the following drive letter,” choose any available letter of your choice and click “Ok,” as shown below

Step 6: Click “Yes” to the Windows message to put into action the changes and close the Disk Management

2. Command prompt

How to change the drive letter on Windows 10 using the “Command prompt” approach. Make sure your computer is running in Admin Mode.

Step 1: Press Win + R and choose Command Prompt (Admin)

Alternatively, you can search for “Command Prompt” and open it.

Step 2: On the page that appears, type “diskpart” and press enter. Then type “list volume” and press enter again.

Step 3: Now, you can see the list of all volumes available on your computer. Locate “###” and identify the volume number of the drive that you wanna change or replace the letter.

Step 4: Type the “Select volume NUMBER” command and choose the drive. Replace “NUMBER” with the volume number that hosts your drive.

Step 5: Run the assign letter=X command to change the drive letter and replace “X” with the new letter that you wanna assign to the drive, as shown below

3. PowerShell

PowerShell also makes changes through command operations, but the command statements are different. Here are systematic tips on how to change the drive letter on Windows 10 using the PowerShell approach.

Step 1: Click “Windows start bottom” and search “PowerShell” (without quotes).

Step 2: Right Click on the result and choose the “Run as administrator” option

Step 3:  On the page that appears, write the “Get-Disk” command and press “Enter.”

Step 4: Go to the drive that you wanna change the letter type this command (without quotes) as shown below and press “Enter.”

4. Add the map network drive

By mapping network drivers, a computer can use one of its drive letters as a shared disk, and other computers connected to this computer can store or read data on this hard disk.

Mapping network drives can only be done between computers connected by the same router. Here’s a systematic description of how to change a network drive letter.

Step 1: Go to the “start button,” search “This PC” (without quotes) and open the app.

Step 2: Go to the top of the page and click on the “Mark network drive” option, as shown below.

Step 3: On the drop menu that appears, select the “Map network drive” option

Step 4: Go to the page that appears and choose a drive letter for your network folder, as shown below.

Step 5: Go to the page that appears and enter the full address of your network on “Folder.” You also have an option to browse it.

Step 6: Click the “Finish” button

Changing drive letters is usually used to reassign a Windows system after migration or if the system does not recognize the external hard drive.

In that case, you need to add a new drive letter to it. However, I recommend that you change the drive letter for Drive C or the drive that hosts Windows.