HMTech.ca

Aug 27 2008

Re-Assigning Drive Letters

Filed under: Technology, Tutorials by: brennan

Normally, when you attach a new external storage device to your computer, it takes the next drive letter available (ie: If C, D, and E are taken, the new drive will be assigned drive F). This is usually okay if all we want to do is quickly copy some files and then eject the device. But sometimes we would prefer that a drive always be assigned the same drive letter. A good example is if you are using backup or file synchronization tool like Allway Sync. In that case, we tell Allway Sync which drive letters contain the folders that we want to synchronize. We don’t want the drive letters of the storage devices to change or we might end up synchronizing to the wrong drive.

You can manually assign drive letters to storage devices by using the Disk Management utility. To get there go to Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Computer Management and look on the left under “Storage” for the Disk Management tool. You can also access the Disk Management tool by right-clicking on “My Computer” and selecting “Manage”:

Right-Click My Computer and select "Manage"

You should see all the volumes currently available on your computer. Right-click on the external drive and select “Change Drive Letter and Paths…”:

the Disk Management tool allows you to change drive letters

Click the “Change” button and then select the new drive letter you want to assign to the drive:

Select any available drive letter

I usually assign the letter ‘Z’ to my backup drive, but you can choose whatever letter you like.

Now whenever you start the computer, the external drive will always be assigned the same letter and you won’t accidentally backup or sync to the wrong drive.