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Author Topic: How to Change or Remove drive letter/s in Windows XP or Vista  (Read 16173 times)

oldfogy

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How to Change or Remove drive letter/s in Windows XP or Vista
« on: September 24, 2008, 08:01:29 PM »

How to Change or Remove drive letter/s in Windows XP or Vista

Why would you want to change a drive letter?

Well, as you can see on the first picture below, there are 7 HDD, 4 Card Readers, and 4 Optical drives on this PC.
Unfortunately as they have been installed at different times they were automatically assigned the next available drive letter which then left them mixed-up all over the place and in no type of order whatsoever "and I like my drives in order"

So, using the drive letter change facility in "Windows Disk Management" (Vista is much the same)
this enabled me to put them in the order I wanted them to appear in "My Computer"

Also giving me the ability to give my "Optical drives" specific drive letters, such as: R for Reader, S for Scribe and W for Writer, which is also the order in which they are installed in my PC from top-to-bottom, this obviously makes it easier to remember which one is which and also keeps them grouped together.

One slight difference you may have spotted, and that is that my drive letters are at the left of the drive label.
This was done using Microsoft's' "Tweak UI" program.


***********************************

How to Change or Assign a drive letter:
To change an existing drive letter on a "Drive,  Partition, or Volume"  follow these steps:

1. Make sure you are Logged on as Administrator or as a member of the Administrators group.
Then Click "Start", click "Control Panel"

2. Click "Administrative Tools"

3. Double-click "Computer Management"

4. Select "Disk Management" in the left pane.

5. Right-click the "Drive, Partition, Logical drive, or the Volume" that you want to assign a drive letter to.
Then click "Change Drive Letter and Paths".

6. Click Change.

7. If not already selected, "Click Assign the following drive letter"
8. Also from the drop-down menu select the new drive letter you now want to use and then click OK.

9. Click Yes when you are prompted, to confirm the drive letter change.

The drive letter that you specified has now changed and the new drive letter appears in the appropriate "Drive, Partition or Volume" in the Disk Management window.

**********************************

How to Remove a Drive Letter

To remove an existing drive letter on a, "Drive, Partition, or Volume" follow the steps above until you reach step "6"

(In brief)
1. Make sure you are Logged on as Administrator or as a member of the Administrators group.
2. Click "Start" click "Control Panel" click "Performance and Maintenance".
3. Click "Administrative Tools" double-click "Computer Management" then click "Disk Management" in the left pane.
4. Right-click the "Drive, Partition, Logical drive or the Volume" that you want to remove a drive letter from, then click "Change Drive Letter and Paths".
5. Click Remove.
6. Click Yes when you are prompted to confirm the removal.

The drive letter has now been removed from the Drive, Partition or Volume that you specified.

N.B.
When you try to remove an existing drive letter, you may receive the following error message:
a) Warning: The volume volume_label drive_letter is currently in use.
If you continue, the drive letter will be freed; however, it will still be available for use until you restart your computer.

b) Warning: Changing the drive letter of a volume could cause programs to no longer run.
This error message may appear if there are files that are in use on the drive, the partition, or the volume.
These files may be in use by you or by other people on the network.

To resolve this issue, use one of the following methods:
a) Click "No" when you receive the error message. "Quit all the programs that are using the files on the volume", and then remove the drive letter.
To do this, right-click the volume, click Change Drive Letter and Paths, and then click Remove.

b) Click Yes to remove the drive letter the next time that you start your computer.
« Last Edit: September 24, 2008, 08:06:14 PM by oldfogy »
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