Reference number: CH000038

Changing the drive letter of a disk drive.

Issue:

Changing the drive letter of a disk drive.

Cause:

Users may wish to change their CD-ROM drive or other disk drive letter to help accommodate other new devices or to meet their personal preferences. 

Solution:

Changing the drive letter of a CD-ROM , CD-R, CD-RW, or other disc drive.
Changing the drive letter of a hard disk drive.
Changing the drive letter of a floppy disk drive.

Changing the drive letter of a CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, or other disc drive. 

Note: When attempting to change the drive letters on your disc drives you can only change the drive to any drive letter after the hard disk drive. For example, if your hard disk drive is C: you can only change your CD drive to D: through Z:. If you have multiple hard disk drives and/or partitions and your last drive letter is F: you can only change your CD drive to G: through Z:. Finally, computers will never allow a CD-ROM to be setup as A:, B: or C:.

Windows 2000 and XP users
Windows 95, 98 and ME users
MS-DOS and Windows 3.x users

Windows 2000, Windows XP users:

1. Users who wish to change the CD disc drive letter in Windows 2000 and Windows XP must have Administrator rights. If you are logged in as a user that does not have these privileges, log out and log in as a user account that does have these rights.
2. Open Control Panel.
3. Open Administrator Tools.
4. Open Computer Management.
5. Open Disk Management.
6. Locate the drive that you wish to change the drive letter, right-click on that drive and select Change Drive Letter and Paths.

Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows ME users:

1. Open the Device Manager.
2. Click the "+" next to "CD-ROM" or "DVD / CD-ROM drives".
3. Double-click the drive you wish to change the letter for.
4. Click the "Settings" tab.
5. Where the computer lists the start and end drive letter, enter the drive letter you wish to change the drive to and click ok.

6. Restart the computer.

MS-DOS and Windows 3.X users:

1. If you are in Windows, Exit to a MS-DOS prompt.
2. Type cd\ and press enter.
3. Once at DOS type "edit c:\autoexec.bat" (without the quotes).
4. In the autoexec.bat window locate the MSCDEX line.
5. Once this line has been found, if it does not have /L:x (were x is the letter of the drive) go to the end of the line and type /L:D (this example should assign the CD-ROM to D: this can be anything up to Z).
6. Once you have made the changes go up to file (if you do not have a mouse press Alt+F) then choose exit and say "Yes" to save the changes.
7. Once back at DOS type "edit c:\config.sys" (without the quotes) 
8. In the config.sys window look for anything that says LASTDRIVE=x (were x is the last drive letter). If you do not see this line go to the very beginning of your config.sys and add LASTDRIVE=K (or the letter that you want to be the ending letter. Note this must be anything between C and Z.
9. Once you have made the changes go up to file (if you do not have a mouse press Alt+F) then choose exit and say "Yes" to save the changes.
10. Reboot computer.

Changing the drive letter of a hard disk drive.

Unlike CD drives and other removable drives, hard disk drives cannot change drive letters. If you wish to create multiple drive letters for a single hard disk drive you can partition the hard disk drive into multiple segments. However, this will only create multiple drives in alphabetical order, such as C: D: and E:. You cannot take a hard drive that has been assigned as D: and assign it to an alternate letter such as K:. 

Changing the drive letter of a floppy disk drive.

In some computer environments you can change the drive letters of a floppy disk drive between A: and B:. However, all IBM compatible computers only support the standard floppy disk drive on either A: or B: and no other drive letter. If you wish to change the drive letter your CMOS setup must support this option.

Additional information:

• If you're looking for additional information about how to change from one drive to another drive in MS-DOS see document CH000515.