Assign or change a drive letter in Disk Management

What you will achieve

Assign, change, or remove a drive letter in Disk Management so a partition, USB stick, or secondary disk appears correctly in File Explorer — and fix letter conflicts between removable and fixed drives.

1) Open Disk Management

1. Press Win + X → Disk Management.
2. Locate the volume — it may show as Healthy but without a letter in Explorer if none is assigned.

2) Assign a new drive letter

1. Right-click the partition → Change Drive Letter and Paths.
2. Click Add → select Assign the following drive letter.
3. Pick an unused letter (avoid letters already mapped to network drives you use daily).
4. Click OK — the volume appears in File Explorer within seconds.

3) Change an existing drive letter

1. Right-click the partition → Change Drive Letter and Paths.
2. Select the current letter → Change.
3. Choose the new letter and confirm the warning — installed apps with hard-coded paths may break; games and some databases are sensitive to letter changes on data drives.

4) Remove a drive letter (hide a volume)

To hide a partition without deleting data:

1. Select the letter → Remove → confirm.
2. The volume remains accessible via Disk Management or by re-adding a letter later.

5) Assign letters with diskpart (scripting)

When the GUI fails on raw or recovery partitions, use Admin Command Prompt:

diskpart
list volume
select volume 3
assign letter=U
exit

Replace volume number and letter as needed. Use remove letter=U to unassign.

6) Fix USB drives stealing system letters

If a USB disk takes D: before a network mapping connects, change the USB to a high letter (U:, V:) via Disk Management and tick Assign the following drive letter for that device each time, or use Storage → Disks & volumes → Properties → Policies to set a permanent letter in recent Windows 11 builds.

7) Mount without a letter (advanced)

Instead of a drive letter, mount a partition as an NTFS folder:

1. Change Drive Letter and Paths → Add → Mount in the following empty NTFS folder.
2. Point to an empty folder such as C:\Mount\Data.

Useful for hiding backup volumes from casual browsing while keeping them accessible to backup software.

Related guides

• Fix external drive not showing
• Map a network drive on Windows