Unable to Change Letter or Assign Drive Letter to D/E/F/G
Qiling Partition Master is a third-party Disk Management equivalent program, which is rated as the top Windows disk management tools in 2021, that overcomes the shortcomings of Disk Management and gives people the other way to solve the most common hard disk problems. Here, when you can't change drive letter in Disk Management, you'll use this alternative software to continue.
Change A Drive Letter in Disk Management
It's supposed to be easy to change a drive letter to a needed one or assign a new drive letter, except the default C: for system partition/boot partition. Theoretically, any letter among D, E, F, G, H... can be chosen and used for other primary partitions or logical partitions. Here's how you change, add or assign a letter of the alphabet to the desired drive in Windows Disk Management. Note that you must be logged on as an administrator to perform the following steps.
Step 1: Open "Disk Management" under Storage by right-clicking "Computer/This PC" > "Manage".
Step 2: Right-click the drive that you want to change, and then click "Change Drive Letter and Paths".
In the next step, you can do any one of the following:
(1) To assign a drive letter, click Add, click the letter that you want to use, and then click OK.
(2) To change a drive letter, click Change, click Assign the following drive letter, click the letter that you want to use, and then click OK.
(3) To remove a drive letter, click Remove, and then click Yes to confirm that you want to remove it.
Why Can't Change Drive Letter As Wanted
Change drive letter and paths grayed out in Disk Management? How to fix the issue of not being able to make a change to the existing hard drive letter? For example, change D to E, or assign a new drive letter as wanted to a newly created hard drive. See what is causing the problem and how to get rid of it.
- The drive you're trying to change might be in use, so you are disallowed to make any changes to it. Just close the program or Window that is using the drive and try again.
- The drive you're working on is either a system partition or a boot partition. You can't make changes to it.
- When you change a letter or assign a new letter to a certain drive but suddenly found that the letter you wanted is unavailable in the drive letter drop-down list, however, the letter is not taken by another drive. Then it might tell you that the letter has already been used by some external storage media that is being connected to the computer right now.
Usually, the rule of the Windows drive letter assignment is like this.
Windows uses MountMgr to manage drive letters. MountMgr will assign the next available drive letter to each device added, regardless of type. With the system drive assigned the letter C, there may be other IDE, SATA or USB devices, such as a DVD ROM or a Flash drive assigned to letters D and E. When adding another drive, Windows will assign the next drive letter available, which in this case would be the drive letter H:
So if there are some external storage devices inserted into the computer, unplug it, and try it again.
If all the listed circumstances go against your case, e.g., the H letter is not being used by another internal or external drive, but it's still unavailable, then try to fix it with other capable partition manager software.
How to Fix Unable to Change Drive Letter and Paths in Windows 11/10/8/7
Besides the situation we mentioned that the option of changing a drive letter in Disk Management is greyed out, there are some other similar errors that will prevent you from completing the job as expected. For example:
- Logical Disk Manager says "Parameter is Incorrect"
- Drive letter missing from the list of available drive letters (Drive letter not available)
Whenever you're trying to change, add or assign a drive letter to a local drive or external hard drive in Disk Management, but failed somehow, you need an alternative tool that can fix the error and move on. Qiling free partition manager works almost the same with Windows Disk Management in managing a hard drive or a removable/external hard disk, including to change a drive letter and paths.
Step 1. Run Qiling Partition Master, click the target partition in the "Disk management" page, and choose "More".
Step 2.Select "Change drive letter", and choose a letter from sub-menu.
Conclusion
To change a drive letter in Windows 11/10/8/7 for drive D/E/F/G or an external drive is a very elementary function we can find in Disk Management. However, this tiny modification sometimes would disappoint us, and we can't change drive letter there.
The reasons might be hard to tell, but with Qiling Partition Master, the third-party comprehensive disk & partition manager, it can be very simple to solve the problem of not being able to change drive letter or assign a new one to a drive. As a matter of fact, it can replace 100% of the functions in Disk Management, in addition, offer many more practical functions that you can't enjoy in the default program. For example, copy partition, merge partitions, migrate OS to HDD/SSD, check partition errors, etc. Download the free partition manager and explore the massive features by yourself.
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