4 Ways to Change a Drive Letter in Windows

A drive letter that Windows assigns to an internal hard drive or a external hard drive is not standard. You can change the drive letters in Windows. There are several ways to change a drive letter through Windows.

You can change the drive letter in Windows through settings, through disk management, through the command prompt or through PowerShell. I will explain all of these ways in this article.

By default, Windows assigns the C drive letter to the Windows primary installation disk. The D drive letter is often assigned as a subsequent drive letter to external equipment. The drive letters A and B are intended for floppy disks, but are redundant these days because that storage is no longer used.

Change drive letter in Windows

The first way to change a drive letter in Windows is through the settings. Right-click on the start button. Click on Settings in the menu.

Click on System in the left menu. Then click on Storage.

Click Advanced storage settings. Then click on Disks and Volumes.

Click on the drive whose drive letter you want to change. Click Properties.

Click Change Drive Letter.

Give the drive a new drive letter by selecting the desired letter. Click OK to confirm.

Change drive letter via Disk Management

The most obvious way to change a drive letter is via disk management. Right-click on the start button. Click on Disk Management in the menu.

Right-click on the drive in Disk Management. Then click Change drive letter and paths.

Click the Change button and change the new drive letter to the desired drive letter. Click OK and confirm the change.

Change drive letter via Command Prompt

If you prefer, use the Command Prompt to change a drive letter or implement these steps in a script. This is how to change a drive letter via Command Prompt.

Click on the magnifying glass in the taskbar. In Windows 10, click the search box in the taskbar. In the search window type: cmd.exe. Right-click on the Command Prompt result and choose Run as Administrator.

These are the commands to enter to change a drive letter via Command Prompt.

You start with the command:

diskpart

Then type:

list volume

The next command depends on the disk you want to change. You will see a “volume” and then a number. You need the number, replace “digit” with the number.

select volume cijfer

To change the drive letter, type, replace drive letter with the new drive letter of your choice:

assign letter=schijfletter

Change drive letter via PowerShell

Changing the drive letter of a drive via PowerShell works slightly differently than via Command Prompt.

Click on the magnifying glass in the taskbar. In Windows 10, click the search box in the taskbar. In the search box type: PowerShell. Right-click on the PowerShell result and choose Run as Administrator.

In the Powershell window type:

Get-Partition

Then type (replace old drive letter and new drive letter):

Get-Partition -DriveLetter 'oudeschijfletter' | Set-Partition -NewDriveLetter 'nieuweschijfletter'

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I hope this helped you. Thank you for reading!