Changing Drive Letters


This can be especially handy if you run a backup utility to an external hard drive or DVD-RW drive.  Then later if you add a drive, flash memory, or some other device - the drive letter of your backup device changes and you have to completely re-do all your settings in your backup software.  This why you should re-letter drives that are used for backups, or any drive that you want the letter to NEVER CHANGE !!

For those drive letters that you want to forever stay the same . . . use a higher letter (M through Z is usually fine).  Here's how:

WinXP

  1. Control Panel/Administrative Tools/ Computer Management/Disk Management
  2. right-click on the drive and select properties
  3. rename the drive letter (or remove if you want to)
  4. To assign a drive letter, click Add


Win98

  1. Control Panel/System . . . Device Manager
  2. double-click the drive you want to re-letter
  3. Settings tab/"Reserved Drive Letters"
  4. set the Start Drive Letter and the End Drive letter to the same letter (the one you want)