windows 10 usb drive letter assignment

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Three Easy Ways to Change USB Drive Letter in Windows 11, 10, 8 or 7

Top three ways about how to change USB drive letter are listed in this post. You can pick the one that you like.

By Bryce / Updated on May 12, 2023

The reasons for changing drive letter for USB device

You may want to change USB drive letter in Windows 11, 10, 8, or 7 under the following conditions:

☞ The USB device, like external hard drive is not recognized in Window Explorer out of drive letter conflict. To resolve the problem, you can reassign drive ☞ letter to the USB drive. ☞ T he USB drive letter keeps changing every time it was connected to your PC. You can assign a permanent drive letter to the USB drive . ☞ You just don’t like the drive letter that has been assigned automatically to the USB drive and want to change it .

How to: Change USB drive letter in Windows 11/10/8/7 easily

Next, there are three ways about how to change drive letter for USB flash drive, USB external hard drive, etc. will be displayed. Pick up one way as you like.

Method 1. Change USB drive letter via Disk Management

Method 2. change usb drive letter using cmd, method 3. change usb drive letter with a free 3rd party gui tool.

Disk Management is a Windows built-in tool, allowing you to manage disk and partitions conveniently. Follow the steps given below to change drive letter of USB drive in Disk Management.

Step 1. Press Windows + R in Windows 11/10/8/7, input “ d iskmgmt.msc ” and hit Enter key to open Disk Management.

Step 2. Right-click the USB partition that you want to change the drive letter and choose Change Drive Letter and Paths... .

Step 3. In the pop-up window, click Change… . If your USB drive is not showing up in drive out of drive letter missing, you can click Add to assign a drive letter to it.

Step 4. Choose a new drive letter from the list and click OK .

Note: If the USB drive is formatted with a file system incompatible with Windows OS, like Ext4 or is write-protected, you can find that “ Change Drive Letter and Paths ” option greyed out.

To resolve the problem, you can format your USB drive with a file system recognized by Windows 10 /11 or remove write protection at first. Or you can try Method 2 or Method 3 to change the drive letter for your USB drive.

You can also change drive letter for USB drive from Command Prompt through the following steps:

Step 1. Pres s Windows + R simultaneously, input cmd, and click OK .

Step 2 . Type diskpart and hit Enter .

Step 3. Run commands listed below in order.

▪ list volume ▪ select volume n ▪ assign letter= m ▪ exit ▪ exit

If you find out Change Drive Letter and Paths greyed out and are unfamiliar with Command Prompt, you can try a 3 rd party partition manager for Windows PC, AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard. It can change drive letter for USB drive even when it is write-protected or not formatted with NTFS or FAT file system. Now, free download it and take a closer look at how it works.

Step 1. Install and run the partition manager. In the home interface, right-click the partition whose drive letter needs to be changed and go to Advanced > Change Drive Letter .

Step 2. In the pop-up window, choose a new drive letter for your USB drive and click OK .

Step 3. You’ll go back to the main interface automatically. Click Apply and Proceed to commit the operation.

✍ Notes: ✌ You can get more functions, like quick partition, partition recovery, etc., if you upgrade to AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional . ✌ To more easily identify USB drive, like external hard drive, you can also choose to change name of USB drive.

How to rename external hard drive [four ways included].

Four valid & simple ways about how to rename external hard drive will be demonstrated in this post. Read it and you can choose one way to change its volume label.

How to Create UEFI Boot USB of Windows 10?

To create UEFI boot USB of Windows 10 or Windows 11 for installation, you can use CMD. If you want to make bootable USB with UEFI support for repair, you can use AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional instead.

How to Restore USB Drive to Original State in Windows 10/8/7?

Try to restore USB drive to original state as you want to restore it back to full capacity or delete all files on it? Refer to this article to get detailed steps to perform this operation.