How to change the drive letter in Windows 7

**singh_abhi** · 03-30-2009, 08:59 AM

How to change the drive letter in Windows 7

To change drive letter of the hard disk partitions or external hard disks or storage media follow these simple steps:

1) Right click on the Computer icon on the Desktop and select Manage option

Figure 1

2) In the Computer Management window thus opened, click to expand Computer Management (Local)\Storage\Disk Management given in the left pane

Figure 2

3) Now right click the disk partition of which you want to change the drive letter and select Change Drive Letter and Path… option in the right pane as shown above

4) In the dialogue box thus opened click Change… button.

Figure 3

5) Now select the drive letter from the dropdown list and press OK button.

Figure 4

6) Close Computer Management window

**crazy_driver_78** · 11-15-2009, 06:16 AM

Thanks for the tip. I have a question. How do I get Disk Management to show virtual drive letters?

I have my games installed to a large external drive. I have backup game disk images stored on yet another large external hard drive. I have the backup game disk images mounted to virtual drives that auto load and auto mount the virtual drives and images at start up so I don't have to sift through my CD collection every time I want to play a different game. I recently rebooted my computer after turning off these external drives. Now my virtual drives loaded with different drive letters. Now the games don't function for three reasons: shortcuts and registry drive letter references do not point to the correct drive letters, the installed game data is now on a different drive letter, and the backup images are now on a different drive letter so my virtual drive auto loader program can't even find them. I turn on the external hard drives but the hard drive letters are not rearranged til I reboot. I know the automatic way to rearrange the drive letters back to proper boot order is to reboot with the external drives powered on before booting like it was back when I was setting all this up. Or I can disable the virtual drives to free up the correct drive letters, change drive letters for the external drives, then reenable and remount the virtual drives and hope I put the correct virtual drive images back onto the correct virtual drive letters. Sorry, but in my honest opinion, I find these methods of drive letter management very inconvenient.

I would like to know if there is a setting to view all assigned drive letters in Disk Management. Or how to lock drive letter assignment to prevent drives from changing.

Thanks in advance,

crazy_driver_78

**jamiedolan** · 03-11-2010, 05:18 AM

Thank You. Great directions, worked perfectly in Windows 7 to change my drive letter.

Jamie Dolan

**prashant** · 03-11-2010, 05:20 AM

Hi jamiedolan,

Welcome to iTechtalk.

Thanks for your feedback.

**Fire488** · 11-18-2010, 04:21 PM

I have a question about this subject. Will the programs and files assigned to a drive work when you change the drive letter and path the way described in this post?
Thank you.