How to name your hard drive. How to change the drive letter in Windows

This article will teach you how to add, change, or remove a drive letter for a partition, volume, or disk device.

Warnings

Letters A and B are reserved for Floppy drives if motherboard supports floppy disks if the drive is physically connected and enabled in the device settings in the BIOS. Otherwise, letters A and B are available for assignment to drives and partitions.

The letter C is reserved for the partition with installed operating system Windows. Do not change the letter C under any circumstances.

After changing or deleting the drive letter, all shortcuts whose properties indicate the absolute path to files or folders will stop working.

Method 1: Using the Disk Management GUI

1. Open Control Panel (View: Icons) > Administrative Tools > Computer Management.

2. From the left menu, select Disk Management.

3. Right-click the partition, volume, or drive for which you want to change the letter.

4. In the context menu that opens, select the command.

5. To change the drive letter:

5.1. Click the button Change.

5.2. In the next window opposite the command Assign a drive letter (A-Z) select a new letter from the drop-down list and click the button OK.

5.3. Confirm the letter change by pressing the button Yes.

6. To remove a drive letter:

6.1. Click the button Delete.

6.2. Click Yes to confirm deleting the drive letter.

Removing a drive letter does not delete the partition and all the data stored on it, but the partition no longer appears in the Computer folder, although you can still see it in Disk Management.

7. To add a drive letter:

7.1. Click the button Add.

7.2. In the window that opens, opposite the inscription Assign a drive letter (A-Z) select the desired letter from the drop-down list and click the button OK.

Method 2. Through the Windows 7 Registry Editor

Warnings

Before you rename a registry setting, make sure that the letter you want to assign to the drive is not used by another drive.

Great care should be taken when editing the registry.

1. Press the WINDOWS+R key combination, type regedit and press OK.

2. In the Registry Editor, open the section:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

All partitions and drives to which letters are assigned are displayed in this registry section as binary parameters \DosDevices\X: (instead of X is the letter of the corresponding drive or partition).

3. To change the drive letter:

Rename.

Enter the desired letter and left-click on the free space.

4. To remove a drive letter:

Right-click the drive letter option you want to change, and from the menu that appears, select Delete.

Confirm deleting the registry value.

In folder My computer you can see your logical drives, each of which is associated with a specific letter of the Latin alphabet. Historically, the letter C assigned to the system disk on which the operating system is installed Windows system. The remaining letters are distributed in alphabetical order. Each user quickly gets used to his own arrangement of letters, however, there are situations when a letter needs to be changed: for example, you just wanted to change D on X or is it necessary for the operation of a program in which the path to some disk is hardcoded. There are also cases when the letter does not need to be changed, but assigned independently for external storage if Windows can't do it automatically.

Your computer can use up to 26 drive letters, from A before Z. Letters C – Z used for hard drives. Letters A And B reserved for floppy disk drives. However, if your computer does not have a floppy drive, you can assign these letters to removable media.

The utility is responsible for assigning, changing and deleting a letter Disk Management. You can open it in the following ways:

1. Click right mouse click on button Start and in the menu that opens, select "Disk Management"

2. Open Start - Execute and enter diskmgmt.msc

3. Open Start and enter in the search bar diskmgmt.msc. In Windows 8, in the Metro interface, you can also use the search function to launch the utility.

Utility window Disk Management

Changing the logical drive letter

In the Disk Management utility, select the disk you need and right-click on it. From the context menu, select Change drive letter or drive path.

The settings window for the selected disk will open. Click on the button Change.

In the next dialogue at point Assign letter In the drop-down list, select the letter that suits us.

Actually, that's all! However, it is worth considering that it is best to change the letter on a blank disk, so as not to disrupt the operation of already installed programs.

Often the user needs to change the drive letter for various reasons. This may be due to both the personal preferences of a particular user and programs that may require a specific path for storing files. After Microsoft released Windows 10, people began to have some confusion with volume names. So how do you change the drive letter in Windows 10? This is what we will talk about today.

So, to rename a specific volume we will use the system utility that Microsoft has kindly built into the OS. It's called "Disk Management".

1. Go to the “Start” menu, select “Windows Tools” and select “Run”.

1. Next, you need to enter “diskmgmt.msc” in the window that appears and click on “OK”. This is much easier than searching for the desired item in the control panel.

1. A program window will open showing HDD with all sections. Now you need to select the desired volume (F or D) and right-click. In the menu that appears, select “Change drive letter or drive path.” It is worth noting that the partition on which the operating system is installed cannot be renamed. It is also useful to know that if there are installed programs, then after renaming they may not work, since the path will not match.

1. At the next stage, you just need to click on the “Change” button in the corresponding window. Don't forget that when you change the volume letter, the label also disappears. Therefore, you will have to re-enter it manually.

1. Now the OS will prompt you to select a new partition letter. Remember that "A" won't do. This is the name of a floppy drive. You also won't be able to select "C" because that's the name of the system drive. The remaining letters are at your complete disposal. You can assign any one. After making your selection, click on the “OK” button.

During the renaming process, the user will see a warning from the operating system that programs installed on this partition will not work if renamed. You just need to press the confirmation key and wait for the process to complete. It is also recommended to restart your PC or laptop to apply all changes.

Using the command line

There is another way to change the local drive letter. It is suitable for those who are used to working with the command line, terminal or some other shell. But here you need some knowledge about Windows OS x32 Bit-x64 Bit. Although, if you do everything according to the instructions, it is not necessary.

1. First, right-click on the “Start” menu and select “Command Prompt (Administrator).” All further actions will be carried out exactly this way. Otherwise it won't work.

1. In the window that opens, enter the text “DiskPart” and press “Enter.” This command opens the console version of the application for managing disks, partitions or volumes.

1. Next, you need to view the list of volumes in order to find out which letters are assigned to the partitions and which they should be replaced with. You need to enter the command “list volume”.

1. Now you need to select a specific volume. This can be done using a command like “select volume X”. X is the number of the required section.

1. Finally, we enter the command to rename the volume. It looks like this: “assign letter= X”, where X is the letter that needs to be assigned. Don't forget to press the Enter key after entering each command.

After completing the renaming process and receiving the corresponding message, you will definitely need to restart your computer. However, it will still not be possible to rename the system partition this way. If you do this, the OS simply will not boot.

Using Windows PowerShell

PowerShell migrated to Microsoft's OS straight from Linux-like systems. This is a very powerful tool for managing the operating system. You can also use it to set a new name for the section.

1. Open the Start menu, go to the Windows PowerShell folder, right-click on the application name and select Run as administrator.

1. In the window that opens, enter “Get-Partition” by pressing Enter. It will show the number of partitions along with their designations.

1. Next, enter the command “Get-Partition -DriveLetter X | Set-Partition -NewDriveLetter Y", where X is the letter of the partition that needs to be renamed, and Y is the new name of the same partition. After entering the command, you must press Enter.

Sometimes during an operation a message may appear: “The parameter is set incorrectly.” This means that you have messed up something with the command. Check your spelling carefully and try again. After completing the operation, be sure to restart your PC.

Conclusion

So, it turns out that assigning a new letter to a local drive is very easy. There are several ways to change the name using a system application or console. A USB flash drive can be renamed in exactly the same way. It is not possible to rename only the system disk and the Floppy drive. But it's not scary.

Video instruction

If you have any questions about the process of renaming a volume, you can additionally watch the video. There are plenty of lessons on this topic. Now your volumes will appear in Explorer exactly as you need.

Greetings, dear guests!

In this article you will learn how to change drive letter in Windows 10, be it an additional partition with an archive of films/programs, for example, or a flash drive, or a removable hard drive. Only for system partition(drive C, as a rule) you will not be able to change the letter. The instructions are written for Windows 10, but you can also use it for previous versions OS.

Let's get straight to the point. Right-click the Start menu and select Disk Management.

Three more options to go to Disk Management, for those who are not looking for easy ways and want to know everything:

So, a window with a list of disks opened. If you are logged in through Computer Management, select the item on the left Disk Management in the Storage devices section.

Right-click on the drive you want to change letter to. Select menu item Change drive letter or drive path...

In the next window, select your disk in the list and click Change.

Next, a new window will pop up in which the item is already highlighted Assign a drive letter (A-Z). To the right of it, select the desired letter in the drop-down menu. Only free letters that are not already occupied by other drives are displayed.

After clicking OK, you will see this warning, indicating that some programs that use this drive letter may stop working. If you installed any programs or games on a separate partition, then I do not recommend changing the letter of such a drive, otherwise you will have problems launching these games/programs later.

In general, agree to continue, click OK.

That's it, the drive letter has now been replaced with a new one.

P.S.: Some shortcuts may stop working for you if they referred to this disk or a file from this disk. Therefore, check the functionality of such shortcuts.

Still have questions about replacing drive letters? Ask, I will answer.

I encountered the following problem: when connecting any removable external hard USB disk / Windows flash drives does not assign a drive letter to it. When you connect a disk, a message appears about installing a new device, the disk appears in Device Manager, but is not displayed in Explorer.

In order for a disk to become available on the system, it must be manually assigned a drive letter each time through the Disk Management console. To do this you need to open the console Computer management(via the Win+X menu) and go to the section Storage devices -> Disk Management. In the list of drives, find the connected removable USB device. As you can see, the disk is healthy, there is one partition with the NTFS file system created on it, but no drive letter is assigned to it. To assign a letter to it, right-click on the section and select the menu item " Change drive letter or drive path».

In the window that appears, click the button " Add", select "" and in the drop-down list select the letter that you want to assign to the drive (for example, F:) and click OK.

After this, the connected USB drive appears in Explorer with the drive letter assigned to it. However, after disconnecting USB devices or rebooting the computer, it is again not assigned a drive letter. You have to again assign a letter manually through disk management - which is somewhat annoying.

Advice. Make sure that Windows detects the partition(s) on the connected drive and that the partition is formatted with the NTFS/FAT32/ file system. If, or the disk is unpartitioned, most likely the USB disk is just new or the partition table is damaged and you will have to restore the file system first.

It seems like some kind of automatic partition detection function on external hard drives is not working.

How can you solve the problem?

First of all, check if the service is running Virtual Disk(the service is called Virtual disk). You can check the status of a service through the service management console ( services.msc).

or from the command line:

SC query vds

SERVICE_NAME: vds
TYPE: 10 WIN32_OWN_PROCESS
STATE: 1 STOPPED
WIN32_EXIT_CODE: 0 (0x0)
SERVICE_EXIT_CODE: 0 (0x0)
CHECKPOINT: 0x0
WAIT_HINT: 0x0

If the service is stopped, start it from the graphical snap-in (Start button) or like this:

Net start vds

Advice. In some cases, for the Virtual Disk service to work correctly, you have to change its startup type to Automatic (see).

Check if the problem is still there. If enabling the service Virtual disk it didn’t help, let’s check if the automatic mounting of new volumes function is enabled.

Note. When automount is enabled, Windows automatically mounts file systems new disks connected to the system and itself assigns drive letters to partitions. If automount is disabled, Windows detects new disks but does not produce them automatic installation and does not assign drive letters to new volumes.

Open a command prompt window (with administrator rights) and run the commands:

Diskpart

Within diskpart, let's check whether automatic mounting is enabled for new volumes:

DISKPART>automount

Automatic mounting of new volumes disabled.
As we can see, automounting is disabled. Let's turn it on

DISKPART>automount enable

Automatic mounting of new volumes enabled.
Automatic mounting of new volumes is enabled.

Let's finish working with diskpart

DISKPART> exit

Leaving DiskPart...

Note. By the way, the automount function is also responsible for ensuring that the system remembers the drive letter assigned to the drive. Thanks to this, the next USB connection disk partitions into external drive the same letters will be assigned as during its previous connection (of course, if these letters are not occupied). To clear saved associations, you need to use the command automountscrub.

Restart your computer and check if letters are assigned to external drives.

Check if the partition is set to USB disk attributes are hidden and "will not assign a drive letter". IN command line Diskpart run:

After this, this partition on the flash drive should be automatically assigned a drive letter on any computer.

Also keep in mind that if USB flash drive If there are multiple partitions, Windows will only see the first partition. The ability to create appeared only in Windows 10 1703 (before that, in order for the second and subsequent partitions on flash drives to be accessible in Windows, you had to use a trick that forced ).

If your flash drive does not appear in the Disk Management console, try using a different one USB port, cable. Try connecting the flash drive directly to the computer (without a USB hub), check whether the power is turned on, and whether it is detected on other computers.