Vista Tutorial - Drive Letter - Add, Change, or Remove

**Brink**

How to Add, Change, or Remove a Drive Letter in Vista

Information

This will allow you to either add, change, or remove (hide) a drive letter to organize them how you like.

NOTE

You can assign the letters D to Z to each drive on your computer. A and B are usually reserved for floppy disk drives, but if your computer does not have floppy disk drives, you can assign A and B to volumes. C is reserved for the drive Vista is installed on. You can see which drive letters are used on your computer by clicking on Computer in the Start menu.
If you want to have all drive letters set to show or be removed from being displayed instead, then see: How to Show or Remove Drive Letters from Displaying in Vista
If you dual boot, or with multiple operating systems, the OS that you boot to will always show as the C: drive in Computer. You will need to look in Disk Management to see how the true drive letters are partitions are positioned on the drive.

WARNING

Many MS‑DOS and Vista programs make references to specific drive letters in the registry. If you change a drive letter, some programs that you have already installed on that hard drive letter might not work correctly anymore. It is best to do this on a new drive or partition before installing anything on it.

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Here's How:

1. Open the Control Panel. (Classic View)
A) Click on the Administrative Tools icon.

B) Click on Computer Management.
NOTE: If the Computer Management shortcut is not here, then you can navigate to C:\Windows\System32\compmgmt.msc and click on the compmgmt.msc instead.

2. Click on Continue in the UAC prompt.

3. In the left pane, click on Disk Management under Storage. (See screenshot below step 4)

4. Right-click on the partition or drive that you want to change, and click on Change Drive Letter and Paths. (See screenshot below)

5. To Change a Drive Letter -
NOTE: You cannot change a drive letter if the drive is either a system partition or a boot partition, like the partition that Vista is installed on. If you get an error, the partition or drive you are trying to change might be in use. Close any program or window that is using the partition or drive and try again.
A) Select the drive letter, and click on the Change button. (See screenshot above)
NOTE: If you are dual booting (Ex: Vista and Windows 7) and you want to change the drive letter for the Vista partition so you can see it in Windows 7, then click on the Add button if this screenshot below is empty.

B) Select (dot) Assign the following drive letter. (See screenshot below)

C) Select a drive letter that you want that is not already being used and click on OK.

D) Click on Yes to confirm the drive letter change. (See screenshot below)

E) Go to step 8.

6. To Add a Drive Letter -
NOTE: This is to assign a drive letter if one has been removed or not already assigned to the drive or partition.
A) Click on the Add button. (See screenshot below)

B) Do the same steps in step 5A to 5C above.

C) Go to step 8.

7. To Remove a Drive Letter -
NOTE: This will only remove the drive letter and not the partition or drive. This can be useful if you are getting a low disk space warning for this drive letter.
A) Click on the Remove button. (See screenshot below step 5)

B) Click on Yes to confirm. (See screenshot below)

C) Click on OK to close window. (See screenshot below step 5)

8. Close the Computer Management window.

9. Click on Computer in the Start Menu to confirm the changes.

That's it,
Shawn