Change a drive letter

Applies To: Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 7, Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2012

If you don’t like the drive letter assigned to a drive, or if you’ve got a drive that doesn’t yet have a drive letter, you can use Disk Management to change it. To instead to mount the drive in an empty folder so that it appears as just another folder, see Mount a drive in a folder.

If you change the drive letter of a drive where Windows or apps are installed, apps might have trouble running or finding that drive. For this reason we suggest that you don’t change the drive letter of a drive on which Windows or apps are installed.

Here’s how to change the drive letter:

Open Disk Management with administrator permissions. To do so, select and hold (or right-click) the Start button, and then select Disk Management.

In Disk Management, select and hold (or right-click) the volume for which you want to change or add a drive letter, and then select Change Drive Letter and Paths.

If you don’t see the Change Drive Letter and Paths option or it’s grayed out, it’s possible the volume isn’t ready to receive a drive letter, which can be the case if the drive is unallocated and needs to be initialized. Or, maybe it’s not meant to be accessed, which is the case of EFI system partitions and recovery partitions. If you’ve confirmed that you have a formatted volume with a drive letter that you can access and you still can’t change it, unfortunately this topic probably can’t help you, so we suggest contacting Microsoft or the manufacturer of your PC for more help.

To change the drive letter, select Change. To add a drive letter if the drive doesn’t already have one, select Add.

Select the new drive letter, select OK, and then select Yes when prompted about how programs that rely on the drive letter might not run correctly.

Restore the system or boot drive letter in Windows

This article describes how to change the system or boot drive letter in Windows.

Original product version: В Windows 10 — all editions, Windows Server 2012 R2
Original KB number: В 223188

Summary

Don’t use the procedure that’s described in this article to change a drive on a computer where the drive letter hasn’t changed. If you do so, you may not be able to start your operating system. Follow the procedure that’s described in this article only to recover from a drive letter change, not to change an existing computer drive to something else. Back up your registry keys before you make this change.

This article describes how to change the system or boot drive letter. Usually it isn’t recommended, especially if the drive letter is the same as when Windows was installed. The only time that you may want to do so is when the drive letters get changed without any user intervention. It may happen when you break a mirror volume or there’s a drive configuration change. This situation should be a rare occurrence, and you should change the drive letters back to match the initial installation.

To change or swap drive letters on volumes that can’t otherwise be changed using the Disk Management snap-in, use the following steps.

In these steps, drive D refers to the (wrong) drive letter assigned to a volume, and drive C refers to the (new) drive letter you want to change to, or to assign to the volume.

This procedure swaps drive letters for drives C and D. If you don’t need to swap drive letters, name the \DosDevice\letter: value to any new drive letter not in use.

Change the system or boot drive letter

This section, method, or task contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, see How to back up and restore the registry in Windows.

Make a full system backup of the computer and system state.

Sign in as an Administrator.

Locate the following registry key:

Select MountedDevices.

On the Security menu, select Permissions.

Verify that Administrators have full control. Change it back when you are finished with these steps.

Quit Regedt32.exe, and then start Regedit.exe.

Locate the following registry key:

Find the drive letter you want to change to (new). Look for \DosDevices\C: .

Right-click \DosDevices\C: , and then select Rename.

You must use Regedit instead of Regedt32 to rename this registry key.

Rename it to an unused drive letter \DosDevices\Z: .

It frees up drive letter C.

Find the drive letter you want changed. Look for \DosDevices\D: .

Right-click \DosDevices\D: , and then select Rename.

Rename it to the appropriate (new) drive letter \DosDevices\C: .

Select the value for \DosDevices\Z: , select Rename, and then name it back to \DosDevices\D: .

Quit Regedit, and then start Regedt32.

Change the permissions back to the previous setting for Administrators. It should probably be Read Only.

Изменение буквы диска Change a drive letter

Относится к: Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 7, Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2012. Applies To: Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 7, Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2012

Если вас не устраивает буква, назначенная для диска, или у вас есть диск, который еще не получил букву диска, можно использовать управление дисками для ее изменения. If you don’t like the drive letter assigned to a drive, or if you’ve got a drive that doesn’t yet have a drive letter, you can use Disk Management to change it. Чтобы вместо этого подключить диск в пустой папке и он отображался как обычная папка, см. статью Назначение диску пути к папке точки подключения. To instead to mount the drive in an empty folder so that it appears as just another folder, see Mount a drive in a folder.

Если вы измените букву диска, где установлена система Windows или приложения, могут возникнуть проблемы при запуске и поиске этого диска. If you change the drive letter of a drive where Windows or apps are installed, apps might have trouble running or finding that drive. По этой причине не рекомендуется изменять букву диска, на котором установлена система Windows или приложения. For this reason we suggest that you don’t change the drive letter of a drive on which Windows or apps are installed.

Вот как изменить букву диска: Here’s how to change the drive letter:

Откройте модуль управления дисками с правами администратора. Open Disk Management with administrator permissions. Чтобы сделать это, щелкните и удерживайте (или щелкните правой кнопкой мыши) кнопку «Пуск», а затем выберите элемент Управление дисками. To do so, select and hold (or right-click) the Start button, and then select Disk Management.

В оснастке управления дисками выберите и удерживайте (или щелкните правой кнопкой мыши) том, для которого хотите изменить или добавить букву диска, а затем выберите команду Изменить букву или путь к диску. In Disk Management, select and hold (or right-click) the volume for which you want to change or add a drive letter, and then select Change Drive Letter and Paths.

Если вы не видите команду Изменить букву или путь диска или она недоступна, возможно, том еще не готов к назначению буквы диска; эта ситуация может возникнуть, если диск не распределен и должен быть инициализирован. If you don’t see the Change Drive Letter and Paths option or it’s grayed out, it’s possible the volume isn’t ready to receive a drive letter, which can be the case if the drive is unallocated and needs to be initialized. Возможно также, что он не предназначен для доступа; это относится к системным разделам EFI и разделам восстановления. Or, maybe it’s not meant to be accessed, which is the case of EFI system partitions and recovery partitions. Если вы убедились, что у вас есть отформатированный том с буквой диска, к которому можно получить доступ, но букву по-прежнему невозможно изменить, к сожалению, этот раздел, скорее всего, не поможет. Рекомендуем обратиться в корпорацию Майкрософт или к производителю своего ПК за дополнительными сведениями. If you’ve confirmed that you have a formatted volume with a drive letter that you can access and you still can’t change it, unfortunately this topic probably can’t help you, so we suggest contacting Microsoft or the manufacturer of your PC for more help.

Чтобы изменить букву диска, выберите Изменить. To change the drive letter, select Change. Чтобы добавить букву диска, если ее еще нет, выберите Добавить. To add a drive letter if the drive doesn’t already have one, select Add.

Выберите новую букву диска, затем нажмите ОК, а затем выберите Да при появлении уведомления о том, что программы, использующие букву диска, могут работать неправильно. Select the new drive letter, select OK, and then select Yes when prompted about how programs that rely on the drive letter might not run correctly.

How to Change a Drive Letter

Don’t like the letters assigned to your drives in Windows? Change them!

While they might seem set in stone, the letters assigned to your hard drives, optical drives, and USB based drives in Windows are very much not a fixed thing.

Maybe you’re using a new external hard drive and now you want to change the drive letter to G from the F it was assigned, or maybe you just like to keep your flash drives organized at the end of the alphabet.

Windows’ Disk Management Makes It Easy

Whatever the reason, the Disk Management tool in Windows makes changing drive letters surprisingly easy, even if you’ve never worked with your drives in any way before.

Changing drive letters in Windows usually takes less than a few minutes, at most.

Unfortunately, you can’t change the drive letter of the partition that Windows is installed onto. On most computers, this is usually the C drive.

These steps apply to Windows XP and newer versions of Windows. See What Version of Windows Do I Have? if you’re not sure which you’re running.

How to Change Drive Letters in Windows

Open Disk Management, the tool in Windows that lets you manage drive letters, among [many] other things.

In Windows 10 and Windows 8, Disk Management is also available from the Power User Menu (WIN+X keyboard shortcut) and is probably the quickest way to open it. You can also start Disk Management from the Command Prompt in any version of Windows, but starting it via Computer Management is probably best for most of you.

Locate from the list at the top, or from the map at the bottom, the drive you want to change the drive letter of.

If you’re not sure that the drive you’re looking at is really the one you want to change the drive letter for, you can right-click or tap-and-hold the drive and then choose Explore. If you need to, look through the folders to see if that’s the right drive.

Right-click or tap-and-hold the drive and choose Change Drive Letter and Paths.

Select Change.

If you’ve selected the primary drive by accident, some versions of Windows will display a message that reads Windows cannot modify the drive letter of your system volume or boot volume.

Choose the drive letter you want Windows to assign to this storage device by selecting it from the Assign the following drive letter drop-down box.

You don’t need to worry if the drive letter is already being used by another drive because Windows hides any letters you can’t use.

Select OK.

Choose Yes to the Some programs that rely on drive letters might not run correctly. Do you want to continue? question.

If you have software installed to this drive, it might stop working properly after changing the drive letter. See details on this in the section below.

Once the drive letter change is complete, which usually only takes a second or two, you’re welcome to close any open Disk Management or other windows.

The drive letter is different from the volume label. You can change the volume label using similar steps.

If You Have Programs Not on the Main Drive

Changing drive letter assignments for drives that have software installed to them may cause the software to stop working. This isn’t quite as common with newer programs and apps but if you have an old program, especially if you’re still using Windows XP or Windows Vista, this is likely to be a problem.

Fortunately, most of us don’t have software installed to drives other than the primary drive (typically the C drive), but if you do, consider this your warning that you might need to reinstall the software after changing the drive letter.

No Changes for the Operating System Drive

You cannot change the drive letter of the drive that the Windows operating system is installed on. If you’d like Windows to exist on a drive other than C, or whatever it happens to be now, you can make that happen but you’ll have to complete a clean install of Windows to do it. Unless you have a pressing need to have Windows exist on a different drive letter, we don’t recommend going through all that trouble.

Change, Don’t Switch

There’s no built-in way to switch drive letters between two drives in Windows. Instead, use a drive letter that you don’t plan on using as a temporary «holding» letter during the drive letter change process.

For example, let’s say you’d like to swap Drive A for Drive B. Start by changing Drive A’s letter to one that you don’t plan on using (like X), then Drive B’s letter to Drive A’s original one, and finally Drive A’s letter to Drive B’s original one.

Using the Command Prompt

You can also change the drive letter from Command Prompt. It’s not as easy as using Disk Management and you can’t see right away which letters are available to choose, but it is completely doable with the diskpart command.