Is It Safe to Change a Drive Letter in Windows?
Changing the drive letter is not entirely harmless and can cause significant problems based on the contents of your drive. If you have applications and software installed on your drive, those applications may cease to work. For example, if you change the name of your D: drive to an F: drive, then the software installed in the D drive will still search for code in the D: file. While you can still access the data inside, there may be errors that will cause a nuisance in your day-to-day usage. However, you may safely change the letter of some drives. If a partition simply includes data files that you rarely use, changing the drive letter may cause minor inconvenience, but nothing serious. The letters of external drives can almost always be changed without any problems.
1. Change the Drive Letter Using Settings
2. Using Command Prompt
Instead of “new drive letter,” type the letter you want. For example: assign letter=S The drive letter will be changed to your preferred letter.
3. Disk Management
4. Registry Editor
and press Enter.
5. Windows PowerShell
Make sure to substitute “current drive letter’ and “new drive letter” with the actual drive letters, then press Enter.
6. Drive Letter Changer Software
If you are looking for a tool that can help you manage your partition and drives, these software will help you change your drive letter.
MiniTool Partition WizardAOMEI Partition AssistantEaseUS Partition Master
These tools are easy to use and have GUI interfaces that make them simple to use and also a one-stop destination for you to manage your storage devices. For the purposes of the demonstration, we are using MiniTool Partition Wizard to change the drive letter.
1. How are drive letters assigned in Windows?
Drive letters are assigned to every new drive in alphabetical order. Traditionally, the A: and B: drives were used for floppy disks, and the system drive on which Windows is installed is named C: by default.
2. Can I change the drive letter for the System Drive?
No, changing the drive letter on the system drive is not possible, as Windows is installed on the system drive. If that was changed, the system drive would not be found and the computer would cease working.
3. Can I switch drive letters among two drives?
No, there is no functionality in Windows to switch drive letters directly between two drives. If you want to switch the drive letters between the D: drive and the E: drive, you will have first change the D: drive to another letter (so as to free up the D:), change the E: to D:, then change the first one to E:. Image credit: Plastic magnetic letters by 123RF
