Assign a Drive Letter

In order to organize your computer hard drives, sometimes changing and assigning a specific drive letter to your drives or external devices can be helpful. In a work environment where you are using network drives that have already been assigned a letter, you will want to assign a drive letter that is different from the other drives in order to avoid conflicts. If you have more than one device or drive with the same drive letter, you will only have access to one of those drives until you reassign a drive letter.

Steps

Linux, OS X, BSD

  1. Enter the following commands for mounting Windows partitions, floppy drives and network drives respectively. 
    • mount /dev/hda2 /mnt/windows
      [1]
    • mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy
      [2]
    • mount wikihownetwork:/home /mnt/wikihownetwork_home
      [3]

DOS, PowerShell

  1. mountvol

Windows XP, Vista

  1. Assign a drive letter to an external device.
    • Click on the “Start” button.
    • Right-click “My Computer”.
    • Select “Manage”, which will open a dialog box called “Computer Management”.
    • Click on “Disk Management”.
    • Choose the drive that you want to assign a new drive letter to and right-click.
    • Choose “Change Drive Letter and Paths”.
    • Click on the “Change” button.
    • Use the Create a Drop Down Menu on Your Website to find a letter that you want to change your drive letter to.
    • Click “Ok”.
  2. Assign a drive letter to a network drive.
    • Click on the “Start” button.
    • Open “My Computer”.
    • Click “Tools” on the menu.
    • Choose “Map Network Drive”.
    • Choose the drive letter you want to name your network drive under the “Drive” box.
    • Type the name of the server and name of the folder of the network drive you wish to map. If you do not know this, click “Browse” and search for it.
    • Check “Reconnect at Logon” if you wish to keep this drive name each time you log on.
    • Click “Finish”.
  3. Assign a drive letter to an internal hard drive/partition.

    If you have installed a new hard drive or partition to your computer, you will want to assign a drive letter in order for you to use the drive.
    • Click on the “Start” button.
    • Right-click “My Computer”.
    • Select “Manage”, which will open a dialog box called “Computer Management”.
    • Choose “Disk Management”.
    • Find the drive with no drive letter associated with it (the hard drive or partition you just installed) and right-click.
    • Choose “Change Drive Letter and Paths”.
    • Choose “Add”.
    • Choose “Assign the Following Drive Letter” and use the drop down menu to find a drive letter you wish to name your new drive.
    • Click “Ok”.



Tips

  • When assigning a drive letter to an external device such as a CD ROM or USB and it does not recognize it, check to make sure that the drive name is not already being used.
  • Make note that removable drives get automatically assigned drive letters in the order that they are connected. Once they are connected, you can still change the drive letter using the steps above.
  • In Microsoft Windows, drives A through F are usually automatically assigned by Windows, so if you want to permanently assign a drive letter to a removable drive, try choosing a letter lower in the alphabet, like X, Y or Z.

Warnings

  • Be careful when changing drive letters. If you had documents and programs installed on your drive and then reassign the drive letter, you may find that the short cuts to these programs no longer work.

Related Articles

Sources and Citations

  1. ↑ http://markhill.me.uk/articles/mounting_windows_partitions/
  2. ↑ http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/mounting.html
  3. ↑ http://linux.about.com/od/linux101/l/blnewbie4_2_3.htm
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